


Emergence

by ellispark



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Amnesia, Angst with a Happy Ending, Brief suicidal thoughts, Canon Divergent, Dean/Cas Big Bang Challenge, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Shameless use of all of the author's favorite tropes, Torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-22
Updated: 2017-11-22
Packaged: 2019-02-04 04:45:31
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 26
Words: 58,862
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12763458
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ellispark/pseuds/ellispark
Summary: Something’s been missing from Dean’s life for the past three years, a void left after a hunt gone terribly wrong. He often feels a sense of longing with no discernible cause, a need to talk to someone who isn’t there.A call from an acquaintance leads Dean to James Novak, a man who disappeared more than a decade ago, and suddenly Dean gets the feeling he’s found what he’s been missing. But James isn’t really James — he’s the angel Castiel, who’s wanted by angels, demons and hunters alike. And he may be at the center of the storm that wrecked Dean’s life all those years ago.





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> Before we begin, I would just like to thank my artist for her endless patience and absolutely stunning work. Y'all, go give her some love [here](http://cas-watches-over-you.tumblr.com/). 
> 
> Heike — Sorry I promised you car sex and didn't deliver, but I'm glad you found some other moments to draw beautifully. You're the best!

**2016**

The rain’s coming down hard now, near sideways. It pelts the Impala with such force that Dean has to hold both hands on the wheel just to keep the car on the road. He stares ahead, trying to make out the centerline, shoulders tense.

“I don’t like this.”

“Okay, can you be more specific?” Sam asks. He’s leaning against the window, his breath fogging up the glass, voice still sleep-hoarse. He’s not nearly worried enough, napping in the passenger seat.

“I don’t know, just something about this feels... off.”

Dean can’t really explain it. It’s just this twist in his gut telling him _you’re out of your depth here. Something terrible is about to happen._

“We could call backup. We can call —”

“Don’t say it,” Dean cuts him off. “We’re not calling Cas.”

Sam sighs. Dean doesn’t turn his eyes from the road, but he can see his brother raking his fingers through his hair, searching for the right thing to say. They should be approaching the Nebraska border. Any second now and they’ll officially be one state over from the bunker, where Dean left Cas and practically ran away.

“Dean,” Sam says quietly. “He’s going to be fine. This isn’t the first time he’s been human. I know things are different between you guys now, but —”

Dean’s hands tighten on the wheel.

“Nuh uh. We’re not going there, either.”

“Why, are you ashamed or something?” Sam snaps, and Dean risks their lives for a few seconds to turn and glare at him.

“No, that’s not it. I’m not ashamed of... us.” It almost hurts to say that. _Us._ Dean doesn’t deserve to lump Cas in with him. He never has, especially not now, after everything Cas has been through, all the shit Dean couldn’t save him from. “It’s just... I’m not putting him in danger. He’s not ready, and that’s final.”

“Right, so you’re just going to put us in danger.” Dean can hear the eye roll in that sentence, even if he can’t take his eyes off the rain-soaked road to see it.

“We’re always in danger, Sam. Have you not been paying attention for the _entirety of our lives_?”

The silence between them is charged. Dean can tell Sam wants to say something else, can practically feel the argument vibrating up through Sam’s body, trying to push itself out of his mouth. But Sam’s holding back, probably to spare Dean’s feelings or what-the-fuck-ever.

The rain, on the other hand, isn’t letting up. If anything, it’s falling harder now, and the roar as it pounds against the car seems to increase in time with the speed of Dean’s heart.

_Something’s not right here. Something’s off._

“I feel it, too, you know,” Sam says, and Dean can barely hear him over the rain. Sam gestures toward the storm, toward the case they’re rushing headlong into. A man going mad and slaughtering his entire family out in Lincoln. People disappearing all over the place immediately after, only for their bodies to be found broken, burned alive, charred beyond recognition. Sam thinks there’s a connection. “Whatever it’s done to itself, it’s powerful. But what are we gonna do, Dean? Run? You just convinced God and his sister to take their sibling rivalry off our planet. We can handle a demon.”

Dean clenches his teeth and tightens his fingers on the wheel. His knuckles start to turn white. There’s a long crackling static sound, then a _BOOM_ as the plains in front of them are illuminated by lightning, bright as day. Dean swallows hard.

“If it is a demon.”

“What else would it be?” Sam asks.

He doesn’t bother to respond.

“Dean, if you’re so worried, maybe...” Sam pauses, switches tactics. “If this is about what Amara did...”

The highway is too damn slick. Dean can feel the shudder of the wheels as they search for traction. It shouldn’t be storming like this out of nowhere. No demon should be this powerful.

“...I know she showed you Mom. I know that had to hurt.”

Sam just never knows when to stop prodding.

“You don’t know a damn thing, Sam,” Dean snaps. “What? You want to have a heart-to-heart in the middle of hurricane weather?” Sam starts to protest, but Dean won’t let up. “You want to know what the bastardization of our mother said to me? She told me to embrace the void. That’s it. ‘Embrace the void.’ Amara wanted me to join her in darkness, so Fake Mom asks me to just kill myself, hand myself over. Said Amara would give me everything I wanted — she’d already brought Cas back to me, hadn’t she? Even made him so he couldn’t fly away.” Dean laughs bitterly. “Took his fucking grace for me; ripped Lucifer right out and made him human along the way. And was that not enough? I could join her in oblivion, end the suffering that has been my life. That’s it, that’s all. Then, you know… she just ended up leaving with Chuck to figure their shit out elsewhere. It’s not... it’s not a big deal. It was all a lie. It wasn’t true. She was desperate.”

His brother is silent for a while. Finally Sam says, softly, “You know we need you here. Me and Cas.”

Dean watches lightning break across the sky in right front of them. Close. Too close.

“She broke him, Sam. For me. I can’t... We’re not calling him. We’ll handle this.”

Sam doesn’t say anything. The storm rages on.

 

 


	2. Phone Call

**2019**

 

Dean fucking hates stakeouts. He hated them when Sam was still hunting with him, and he hates them now.

The thing is, Dean is a man of action. Put a gun in his hand, he’ll find something to shoot. Drop a lead for a case in his lap, he’ll track down the bad guy. Stick him in a car for a day and make him watch a warehouse? His palms are itching, his knees twitching by the first hour.

There’s some pastor droning on and on about being prepared for the apocalypse on the radio, and it sounds familiar in a way Dean can’t quite place. Maybe a little too much like John Winchester, shouting at him from beyond the grave. _“And the Lord told you to keep an eye steady on the sky, for he’ll make his glorious return one day soon, heralded by thunder…”_ Dean shuts the radio off.

The building across the street from his parked car is dead. No one’s walked in or out in the past six hours. If the vampire nest that’s supposed to reside in this warehouse is still active, then they all must be hibernating.

His phone rings, and Dean picks it up quickly, eyes moving to the ID, everything in him hoping it says “Sam.”

 _Well, fuck._ No such luck.

“What do you want?” he grounds out for an answer, preemptively irritated.

“That’s no way to greet an old friend,” a familiar, mocking voice returns. “And here I was calling to tell you some pretty big news.”

Dean rolls his eyes. Seth Lucas is one of the biggest assholes Dean’s ever had the displeasure of working with. Just an all-around jerk, the only reason he can even keep up a hunting compound is no one else has access to gadgets quite like he does. Where he gets the money, Dean has no idea, but in the past three years Seth’s place has taken over the market on hunting supplies — and not the bow-and-arrow kind of hunting.

“Seth, I’m kind of in the middle of a vamp nest stakeout here. So — _again_ — what do you want?”

Seth sighs theatrically, but blessedly cuts to the chase. “We had someone show up at The Bend last night claiming to be a hunter.”

Dean tries not to huff in impatience and doesn’t quite succeed.

“Alright, and?”

“He lied to us about his name.”

Why the fuck this is supposed to matter to him is lost on Dean. 

“Man, stop dragging it out.”

Seth laughs. It’s not a nice sound.

“You want to know who this guy’s ID says he is, Winchester?” Dean doesn’t bother to respond, simply picking at his cuticles while he waits for Seth to get on with it. “It’s one James Novak of Pontiac, Illinois.”

 _Novak._ That sounds so familiar, that’s —

_Wait._

“Claire Novak’s dad?” That catches his attention. Dean’s scrambling now, putting the Impala in drive to move it away from the warehouse. This takes precedent.

“That’s impossible, he... he’s dead. Did you —”

“I’m not an idiot,” Seth snaps. “I ran his prints. They’re a match; it’s him. But he’s acting real shifty. Came to us looking for help interpreting certain... signs and portents. He doesn’t want us to call Claire. Insisted against it, actually. And since I’ve never actually met the girl in person, well, I called you. We can take care of him, but I thought you might want to let her know.”

Dean knows all too well how paranoid Seth and the rest of his gang of hunters are. He can only imagine what they’ve already done to the man. He doesn’t want them taking care of anything.

“I’m headed your way right now,” Dean says. “Don’t do anything; I want to talk to him. I know his daughter pretty well. I can work this out.”

“Dean, Dean.” Seth sighs, and the static burst it causes across the line grates in Dean’s ear. “I’m really just letting you know as a courtesy. I don’t take orders from you.”

Then there’s a sharp _beep beep beep_ followed by a dial tone, letting Dean know the jackass hung up on him. He curses as he steers the Impala out onto the highway. He’ll call someone else to scope out the vamp den later. He’s got to get to Nebraska now.

Dean dials the most familiar number he knows with one hand as he guides Baby through the late afternoon traffic. Sam picks up after four rings.

“Dean —”

“I know, I know, I promised not to disturb the honeymoon,” Dean interrupts. “But Sam, I need your help. Eileen’s, too, if she’s down for it.”

Sam sighs. “It’s my brother,” he says, slightly muffled and probably to Eileen. “This better be good, man.”

“It’s been three weeks, Sam. Surely you guys have had all the disgusting sex you can possibly handle by now. I mean, I know she can’t hear the weird noises I’ve unfortunately heard through some narrow motel walls, but she can definitely see the ugly faces you make...”

“Ha ha, very funny,” Sam says sarcastically. There’s a pause where Dean can hear him hitting buttons. “You’re on speaker.”

“Uh, Sam, don’t you know anything about your own wife?”

“It’s symbolic of _trust_ , jerk,” Sam mutters. “I’m signing to her.”

“Well now you’re just showing off.” Dean honks at a truck that passes too close to his baby. He can hear Eileen laugh in the background as Sam catches her up on the conversation.

“He is a showoff, isn’t he?” she asks Dean, and he smiles.

“I tried to teach him some humility by always being the most handsome brother, but unfortunately it just didn’t take.”

“If you guys are going to diss me the entire time I’ll just hang up,” Sam says in his most long-suffering voice, but Dean knows he’s still signing out the conversation to Eileen because she laughs again.

“You’re the most handsome brother,” she says, clearly to Sam, and Dean rolls his eyes.

“Oh, come on Eileen.”

“No,” Sam says. “We’re not starting those jokes again. What are you calling about? Do you have a case?”

Dean feels a brief stab of hurt at his brother’s gruffness. He tries not to be bothered too much by it. After all, the guy just got hitched, and he did ask for just one month alone with his new wife. It’s not about the Dean-and-Sam show anymore. Now it’s all Sam-and-Eileen. The Winchesters are finally growing up, letting each other go. It’s a good thing. Maybe one day he’ll even get to be an uncle, and he’ll be awesome at that.

So Dean’s decided he’s not jealous of his brother’s divided attentions, or of the fact that he himself has no one who loves him like Eileen loves Sam. He’s not.

“It’s, well... I don’t know if _case_ is the right word.”

“Then what is the right word?” Sam’s getting impatient. 

Dean watches the directional signs. His exit should be coming up soon.

“Um, problem? Seth Lucas and crew ran into James Novak yesterday.”

There’s a long silence. “Who?” Eileen asks in the background. Dean can hear his brother reply, “One second, babe. I’ll explain, just hang on.”

Sam comes back closer to the phone.

“Are they sure?”

“They checked his prints. Apparently it’s a match.”

“Does Claire know?”

“No. I don’t think so, not yet.” Dean turns on to west I-80. “I’m headed to The Bend right now. Just leaving a bust case in Cheyenne. If you leave now we should get there at the same time.”

“Okay,” Sam says, and Dean is blessed that he can always count on his brother when he really needs him, even now that he has other familial obligations. “Do you want to call Claire? Or wait until we see what kind of shape he’s in?”

Sam doesn’t say anything out loud, but Dean knows the possibilities he’s considering. The man’s been missing for over a decade, gone without a word to his only child. He could be insane, could be a heartless, hardened hunter. Or Seth might have decided to pull some of his shady “interrogation tactics” on the guy, leaving him bruised and battered. Whatever the case may be, they need to find Novak and evaluate the situation before telling Claire he’s still alive.

“Hold off,” Dean says. “Let’s talk to him first. Just get on the road as fast as you can.”

“We’re on our way,” Sam says. “Meet you there.”

His brother hangs up, and Dean eyes the sky in front of him. The road stretches out nice and long here through the blank space on the map that makes up Wyoming, and Dean usually likes driving out this way. With the horizon clear for miles, it’s easier for him to clear his own mind, too; to focus on nothing but the road and the sky and the hum of the Impala’s engine. 

But it’s darker ahead than it should be for this time of day. The sun hasn’t set, but it’s turning an orangish color, disappearing behind dark clouds that Dean could’ve sworn weren’t there a minute ago. They settle over the sun, blotting it out — ominous, a bad omen. But he can still see a few rays breaking out, shining through the clouds to the west.

“I’m coming,” Dean says, and he’s not sure who he’s talking to, he never is, but it feels right to say. Sam would judge him if he was here, but he’s not here, so Dean allows just a few more words of meaningless comfort to slip past his lips. “Hang on, man. Hang on.”


	3. James Novak

The Bend is nothing but a ghost town transformed into an unofficial hunters’ community, located just far enough off the interstate it hardly gets any traffic other than those who already know exactly what it is. It’s called The Bend because all major roads seem to bend around it, leaving it fairly safe from prying eyes.

It’s been around as long as Dean can remember — not that John ever took him and Sam to any type of hunting community. The man was nothing if not distrustful of anyone without the last name Winchester. But Dean’s heard the stories about the place since he was a kid, and he saw it in person for the first time a few years ago, when Seth Lucas showed up and started a revival of sorts. Whereas hunters used to just visit The Bend to share war stories and informally swap supplies, now there’s a whole sort of compound going — they organize attacks on known monster colonies, bring in military grade weapons, have a collection of lore to rival even the bunker’s. There are rumors going around that the hunters who are really _in_ with Seth have helped him nearly eliminate the angelic presence still left on earth after Chuck took off for good. 

It’s a dream come true for the hardcore, old-school hunters, the _shoot first, take no questions_ people — to have a place like that, a leader to rally around. And Dean hates it.

He, Sam and Eileen worked one case with Seth, a kitsune in Missouri about a year or so ago. Seth reached out to them with promises of great gear in exchange for their service — or he’d reached out to Sam, actually, apparently impressed with stories he’d heard of the boy who was possessed by Lucifer and lived to tell the tale. He clearly hadn’t wanted Dean or Eileen along for the ride, but them’s the breaks.

The hunt went well in that they found what turned out to be two kitsunes and dispatched of them in record time. It went poorly in that Seth showed his hand when it came to preferring what he called “advance interrogation techniques,” which the rest of them just labeled torture. When he asked them to come back with him to The Bend, the refusal came easy. “We like our freedom,” Dean told him, and the Winchesters cut out.

Since then Seth’s called a few times to ask for help on cases, and they always feign busyness. The stories told about Seth mark him as nothing short of cruel, even in the hunting world, and Dean has a gut feeling they’re all true. The guy’s just a creep, honestly, and better to be avoided. 

But above all Dean hates how he’d looked at Sam, like he wanted to bring him home and add him to his collection of trophy hunters. He also hated the way Seth looked at him — like he wanted to shoot Dean when his back was turned. To think of him having James Novak at his disposal makes Dean shudder. 

He pulls off the highway and follows a bumpy, pockmarked county road to The Bend, edging past the lone gas station and toward the large farmhouse situated centrally among the ramshackle remnants of some former frontier town. The farmhouse is where all the hunters gather, and it’s sure to be where Seth is keeping Novak.

Sam and Eileen are already parked out front, leaning against one of the old cars from the Bunker. They’re signing animatedly to each other, and Dean can catch a few words here and there. It looks like they’re discussing how to proceed. Dean’s wondering the same thing. He pulls up next to them, careful to ease around an ugly gold Lincoln Continental parked at the side of the house, and turns the engine off.

“Hey Dean,” Eileen says with a smile as he walks over to them. He bends down to kiss her cheek, then leans back so she can see his mouth.

“And how’s my favorite sister?”

“Your only sister.”

“Still my favorite.” Dean smirks at her, and Eileen shakes her head.

“What a charmer.”

“I always told you that you picked the wrong Winchester.”

She just rolls her eyes fondly while Sam sighs.

“Okay,” Sam says, tapping Eileen’s shoulder lightly to catch her attention. They both turn to him. “What’s the plan? We just go in there, ask to see him? Will Seth even let us in?”

Dean looks at the farmhouse. Two-story, white, well-cared-for. The windows are shuttered, and no one’s out on the porch. Usually there are hunters milling about, cleaning guns and shooting the breeze, but he didn’t see more than a few people up the road on the drive in.

“I don’t know, man. And if they do let us in, what do we say to him? ‘Hi, we hunt monsters with your daughter sometimes. She thinks you’re dead. Might wanna tell her you’re not?’”

“That’s...terrible.” Sam runs a hand down his face, and Eileen nods in solidarity.

“Well, he did leave her for ten years,” Dean snaps. “Maybe he deserves terrible.”

Eileen holds up a hand.

“Can we just go in there and work it out as we go?” she asks. “We’re not doing any good standing around here arguing about it. And we need to get to him before Seth does something crazy stupid.”

 _Or something crazy sadistic,_ Dean thinks. He looks at Sam, and he can see his own thoughts reflected in his brother’s eyes. Whether married or not, nothing kills that old Winchester sibling connection.

“All right,” Sam says. “We go in. Dean, let me handle talking to Seth.”

“Now hold on —”

“No.” Sam shakes his head. “You antagonize him, and that won’t get us anywhere.”

“Sam’s right,” Eileen says, shrugging. Dean glares at her half-heartedly. “Sorry, Dean. Plus with his creepy crush...”

Sam shudders. “Can we not talk about that?” he asks.

Dean and Eileen exchange a conspiratorial look. Dean smiles a little. He’s always liked her.

“Fine,” he relents, and Eileen nods like _yes, that was the right thing to do_. “Let Sam do the talking. But you’re not cutting me out of the room if he lets us in to see Claire’s dad. I want... I need to be in on that.”

“Whatever,” Sam says. “Ready to go?”

Eileen and Dean nod, following Sam as he walks up the steps to the front porch. He knocks on the door, painted a deep shade of red that disturbingly reminds Dean of dried blood. He makes out vague shapes moving around behind the thick windowpane as they wait for someone to answer.

It’s a unfamiliar hunter who pulls the door open, staring at them with narrowed eyes.

“Can I help you?” she asks gruffly, in a thick Cajun accent.

Sam puts on his brightest smile, the kind that convinces medical examiners to let him run around unsupervised in their labs and used to get beautiful co-eds to fall into bed with him.

“Yeah, we’re the Winchesters.” He gestures at the others. “We’re all hunters. Uh, we’re here to see Seth, if he’s around?”

“I know who the Winchesters are.” Her dark eyes narrow even more, something Dean previously would have thought impossible. “Wait here.”

She closes the door directly in Sam’s face.

“Doing peachy there, spokesman,” Dean says, grinning sardonically at his brother, who just rolls his eyes. Muffled voices can be heard from inside the house, rising and falling again in the familiar pattern of a heated argument. The Winchesters shift uncomfortably on the porch. Just when Dean’s about to suggest cutting around the back, the door swings open again.

“Well, how about this,” a familiar voice croons. “The greatest hunters in the world, finally here to pay me a visit!”

Seth looks like shit. That’s the first thing Dean thinks when he sees him — disheveled and worn, his shaggy blonde hair messy and matted and his eyes sunk low in their sockets, a gross looking canker sore at the corner of his mouth, whole body pale and thin. Dean exchanges a quick glance with Sam just to cover that yes, he sees this, too. 

“Come in, come in!” Seth steps out of the way to let them pass, but not far enough back to where Dean and Sam can squeeze by without brushing against him. He’s smiling that predatory grin Dean remembers hating so much, made creepier by how exhausted Seth obviously is. “I can’t say the timing is great, fellas, but who am I to turn down the infamous Winchesters?”

Dean’s dying to tell him to cut the crap and lead them to Novak, but Sam and Eileen both look at him with raised eyebrows that scream _keep your mouth shut._ He hates that they have that couple stare down already. He glances around the room instead, half listening as Sam explains why they’re here. There are three other hunters sitting in the center of what’s probably meant to be a living room, all playing poker at a beat-up wooden table. The woman who answered the door pointedly ignores the newcomers and focuses on her hand, but the two other men are staring at Dean. He nods at them with a cocky smirk, half a hello and half an intimidation tactic. If the woman’s heard of the Winchesters, likely they all have. Sometimes it does help to have the world know exactly what you’re capable of.

“Listen, guys,” Seth is saying, hands out in a falsely placating gesture. “Like I told Dean over the phone, he’s not talking. I called you so you could tell the daughter — I don’t have her number.”

“What are you doing to get him to talk?” Eileen asks, and it’s clear from her tone of voice that “torture” would very much be the wrong answer.

Seth shakes his head and huffs a laugh.

“You think so little of me, I know.” He looks at Dean, eyes narrowing. “But my methods helped us find that second kitsune in Missouri in record time, and you know it. You can relax, though. This guy is human, isn’t he?” Seth’s smile at this point is so disingenuous that his face seems to crack under the strain of it. “I’ve got nothing against him other than the fact that he lied to me.”

“You can’t keep him here against his will,” Sam says. “You do realize that’s grounds for a kidnapping charge?”

“Sammy, the ex-lawyer,” Seth says with fake enthusiasm, and Sam glares at him, likely equally affronted by the nickname and the reminder of his painful past. “Like I said, relax. I’m not keeping him here. We promised to help with his signs. We’re just waiting for him to be a bit more forthcoming before we actually do any helping.”

Seth receives three identical disbelieving stares at that. He sighs, throwing his hands up, jerking like a puppet on strings.

“Look, I’ve offered him the last room on the left at the bunks next door,” he says. “Go see him if you want! Makes no difference to me. I’d rather not deal with the family drama. Why the hell do you think I called you?”

“I don’t know,” Dean says, unable to bite his tongue any longer. “You’re falling apart under the strain of running your little compound here, and you thought we’d get one problem off your hands?”

The glare Seth throws at him seems aimed to kill. Dean can play that game, too. He smiles back, feral and all teeth. Seth’s nothing but a punk ass kid with money who wanted to buy a few toys so he could legally kill humanoid things. Dean Winchester has faced down the devil himself.

“It’s been a long year,” Seth says, voice venomous. “Long few years, actually. But you’re right, Dean. I’d be glad for you to handle this. By all means, go get your boy.”

Something about the way he says that, _your boy,_ makes Dean’s stomach turn, though it’s nothing but a pathetic jibe. He’s out the door before he can hear Sam’s response to Seth, not willing to spend another second in that house. 

Dean’s never really spent any time at The Bend, but it’s easy enough to spot the old bunkhouse, set to the left and slightly behind the main building. It’s where the other hunters stay during their downtime, and Seth’s offered them a room there before, not that they’d have any incentive to accept it with the bunker just a few hours drive away.

Sam calls out for Dean to wait up, but for some reason he can’t seem to stop moving now that he knows where he’s headed, like there’s a gravitational pull dragging him up the stumpy step to the bunkhouse, in through the door, down the hall. Last room on the left. The door is closed, and Dean, though raised in a car, does have some manners. He knows he should knock, but he doesn’t for some reason, just swings the door wide open.

The room is dark except for a small desk light, and it takes a few seconds for Dean’s eyes to adjust. There’s a man lying on the bed, squinting at the door in confusion. He’s wearing well-worn clothes and no shoes. Dean can see his big toe through a huge hole in one of his socks. His eyes look very dark, and they widen in shock as he takes in Dean, standing in the doorway, now unsure what exactly it is he plans to say.

The man’s mouth opens and closes, and he scoots back a bit on the bed, just enough for Dean to realize that he’s probably afraid of the stranger who just burst into his room. They are, after all, in a compound full of killers.

“Are you —” Dean can’t for the life of him figure out why it’s so hard to get the words past his throat. “Are you James Novak?”

It’s difficult to catch the man’s expression in the low light, but Dean sees his head tilt to the side.

“Is this some kind of joke?” That voice is a lot deeper than Dean expected it to be, and yet it immediately fits the man perfectly. He sounds almost wounded, which Dean doesn’t understand.

“Uh, no. No joke. If you’re James Novak, I’ve been looking for you.” Dean winces. That didn’t really come out the way he’d planned. He looks like a psycho now for sure.

He also isn’t expecting the startled, bitter-tinged laugh from the man, whose face is still covered in shadow.

“You’ve been looking for James Novak,” he says. “Right. Of course.”

“Yeah,” Dean says, maybe a little impatiently, confused and flustered. “If you’re him, I know your daughter.”

Where is Sam? Aren’t he and Eileen supposed to be here by now? Dean looks back down the hall and sees them at the far end, signing to each other again. He sighs.

“Look, my name is Dean Winchester. I met Claire a few years ago on a hunt. She’s a hunter now, by the way. I guess you know what that is because you’re here. Uh, anyway, she thinks you’re dead and I just...” The man hasn’t moved except to cross his arms over his chest. If he was going for intimidating, he’s missed the mark. It looks more like he’s hugging himself. “Can you just tell me if I have the right guy?”

The man stands up from the bed and moves to the middle of the room where Dean can see him more clearly thanks to the light from the hall. His face is worn, tired; his jaw covered in days-old stumble. There are deep bags under his eyes, which Dean now sees are blue.

He squints at Dean for several long seconds, and Dean shifts uncomfortably. The man must read something in his face, because, like a light blowing out, his expression changes. That searching gaze seems to crumple into something approaching despair, just for a second, so fast Dean barely catches it, before the stranger’s stare goes hollow. It’s sort of frightening, actually, how dead-eyed the man suddenly looks. It’s enough to cause Dean to take a half-step back — and he makes a living out of killing frightening things.

“Yeah,” the man says, voice flat. “I’m James Novak.”


	4. Voices

Sam is worried about Dean.

To be fair, he worries about his brother a lot these days. It’s like a pastime, and an ironic one at that, considering how much time he’s spent wishing Dean would stop worrying so much about him.

But there’s something wrong with Dean.

It’s become increasingly more noticeable in the past six months, since Sam and Eileen announced their engagement and eventual plans to leave the bunker. Sam knew it would hit his brother hard — Dean is nothing if not desperate to keep the people he loves all in one place — but he didn’t expect the delusions to come back with such force.

Dean talks to someone who isn’t there.

Sam’s not sure exactly when it started — maybe two, three years ago? He’d walk in on Dean, standing alone in the middle of some room in the bunker, usually his own, just talking to the air.

He’d stand there, zoned out, eyes focused on nothing, mouth moving to form soft, quiet words. The first few times Sam brushed it off as Dean simply talking out loud to himself. He would call his name, and they would both act like nothing weird happened.

But then Sam started listening to what Dean said. Dean wasn’t practicing any spells, reciting any grocery lists, singing any songs. He was speaking to someone, someone he never seemed to name.

“I’m worried about you, okay?” Dean said, staring at a lore book without reading. “Why haven’t you come back? Where did you go?”

“Come on,” he said, zoning out while driving the Impala, so out of it that Sam leaned across the seat to take the wheel, hands shaking as he called Dean’s name. “Just give me some sign you’re out there.”

“I can’t keep doing this every night.” Sitting on the edge of his bed, head buried in his hands, voice so low Sam could barely hear it from the doorway. “Please, just — please.”

Dean seemed to know he was doing it, but only after he stopped talking. Sam would call his brother’s name sharply, and Dean would jump, locking eyes with him, voice dropping off.

“Who are you talking to?” Sam would ask desperately, fear and worry mixing in his gut.

“I don’t know... I don’t know.” Dean’s eyes were always watery, his answers shaky. Sam hated it. He hated how tender Dean sounded, talking to the walls, only to look at Sam like something had been ripped from him every time he snapped back to the real world.

“Something’s missing,” Dean told him one day, not long after Sam caught him standing in front of a burning pot of pasta, mumbling “Can you tell me if it’s my fault?”

“Jesus Christ, Dean!” Sam said, shutting the burner off and pulling his brother away from the smoke. “Are you _trying_ to burn the bunker down?”

Sam made Dean drive with him to Smith Center to get burgers and shakes that day. They sat in the car, food untouched, as Dean confessed he felt like he was losing it.

“There’s this, I don’t know...” Sam watched as his brother rubbed at his eyes in the passenger seat, groaning. “I don’t know how to explain it, Sam.”

“Please try.” At this point, Sam dropped any pretence of bravery. He let the fear fall through, knowing if Dean heard it he would respond to it, hopefully with honesty.

Dean shuddered a little, eyes wet and darting.

“There’s someone who’s supposed to be here,” is all he said, frustrated.

“Dean, what are you talking about?”

“I feel them.” Dean placed a hand absently over his chest, still not looking at Sam. “I need to get them back.”

Sam recognized that look. It was the look of a Dean who wasn’t all there. He snapped his fingers in his brother’s face and Dean blinked, startled.

“Dean,” he said slowly, patiently. “Maybe this is about Amara? You said she was... bound to you, right? Maybe it’s leftover from that. You think you should still be able to feel that pull.”

“Maybe.” Dean didn’t sound at all convinced. Sam wasn’t too convinced, either, in all honesty. Dean never talked about Amara in that soft tone he used for this unseen person, never acted like he missed her. He was afraid of her; he didn’t want her to find him. But it’s the best guess Sam could come up with. It’s the guess they both chose to reluctantly accept.

Eventually the number of times Sam caught Dean in the midst of one-sided conversations tapered off. Maybe Dean did it less, maybe he got better at hiding it. Sam’s not sure. He does know that the ramblings seemed to pick back up in the last few months, and now...

Well, now Dean’s mumbling to the walls again.

They’re staying in the bunkhouse. Sam protested against the idea; Eileen was against it, too. Seth seemed all too excited about it. Dean, when Sam asked why on Earth he wanted to stay, just shrugged and said, “I need more time to convince Novak he should talk to Claire.” No elaboration.

Sam wants to know what his brother said to James Novak — the conversation certainly wasn’t long; he watched Dean walk in and back out of the room in less than five minutes. But surely something about it must have thrown Dean off, off enough to agree to sleep anywhere near Seth Lucas, off enough to speak to his unknown entity with Sam lying in bed right across the room from him.

It was Eileen’s idea for Sam to stay with Dean instead of her. _“He doesn’t look right,”_ she’d signed to Sam after Dean brushed past them to get his bags from the Impala. _“I’m worried.”_

Yeah, Sam’s worried, too. Sam’s worried, and Dean’s whispering, “Please come back,” repeatedly under his breath, his voice wavering like he’s trying not to cry.

Sam wonders if he’s even awake, or if he dreams like this every night, talking to a ghost in the darkness. Alone.

He holds a pillow in his arms, ready to throw it at Dean if he starts sounding too distressed. It’s what they used to do for nightmares when they slept in the same motel room — they don’t have to talk about it, just wake the other up so they both can sleep in peace. But the aimless muttering ceases, and Sam puts the pillow back behind his head. He reaches for his phone.

 **Sam:** He was doing it again.

He stares at the ceiling in the dark, tracing the knots in the wooden boards with his eyes while he waits for his wife to respond. It doesn’t take long.

 **Eileen:** How bad?

 **Sam:** It lasted a few minutes. I think he was talking in his sleep, but it’s dropped off now.

 **Eileen:** If he starts again maybe you should wake him up. I can come in there, too, if you need me.

He sighs. As much as he’s already missing sleeping next to her, there’s not a ton of space in the cramped bunkhouse rooms.

 **Sam:** I barely fit in this bed. I don’t think it could handle us both.

 **Eileen:** I’m compact ;)

Sam smiles. He’s so thankful for her, in a little ways and big ones. She’s been there for him and Dean since this mess started, and she always knows exactly what to say to make him feel just a little bit lighter.

It’s nice to have someone help carry his burdens, the ones he can’t put on Dean for one reason or another. It’s nice to have someone who sees him as an equal, not as a child to be protected. Someone who loves him in a way he thought he’d never have again after Jess.

 **Sam:** OK, but you have to be quiet. I don’t want to wake Dean up.

 **Eileen:** You realize I can’t hear how much noise I’m making, right?

He almost laughs, covering his mouth with his palm to hold it back.

 **Sam:** Ha ha. I know you know how to sneak regardless.

 **Eileen:** I’m on my way. :)

Sam listens for her footsteps down the hall, keeping an eye on Dean under his mound of blankets on the other bed. The moonlight breaks through the curtains just enough for Sam to see that his brother is curled in on himself, and it almost hurts to look at him. Dean used to sleep ramrod straight unless he was truly exhausted, always prepared to spring up with a gun in hand.

Something’s wrong. Something’s been wrong for a long time, since the showdown with Amara and Lucifer and God, and Sam doesn’t know how to fix it. Doesn’t know how to tell his brother that he sometimes feels it, too — that overwhelming sense that their lives have been displaced, that there’s a missing piece they just can’t see. That sometimes Sam feels like if he turned his head fast enough he’d find someone else there, but he’s not afraid of that person. They belong there. They should be there...

But it makes him scared to think those things, so he doesn’t tell Dean. One of them needs to keep a steady head, and if it’s his turn, Sam will hold Dean up. They’re brothers. It’s what they do.

Eileen almost slips in without him noticing. When she eases into bed with him, pushing him right into the wooden wall, now crammed against it and forced onto his side, Sam doesn’t even care. He wraps his arms around her sleepily and presses a kiss to the back of her head.

“It’s going to be okay,” she whispers, and he just nods, bumping through her hair with his nose.

Right. _It’s going to be okay._ They’re going to make it okay.

Sam just wishes he knew what _okay_ really means.

///

 

Dean wakes up early, before-sunrise early. He can’t say that surprises him — he never really sleeps well anymore — but he somewhat selfishly hoped that having Sammy nearby might gain him a few extra hours. Apparently not.

He smiles when he catches sight of Eileen, curled in toward Sam. She’s pushed him back into the wall, and his too-long hair is a matted nest from rubbing up against the wall all night. Of course those two couldn’t be apart, even for a night. If they weren’t so happy together, Dean would be jealous.

Well, maybe he’s jealous anyway, of both of them — jealous of Eileen for taking Sam away; jealous of Sam for finding a great girl to finally settle down with. But Dean tries to shove that shit down, to remind himself that they deserve this. Besides, Eileen is a hunter and a Woman of Letters, and she and Sam are still living in the bunker with him. He’s not alone.

That will have to be enough for now.

He’s quiet when he gets up, careful to step over the floorboards that creaked when he walked into the room last night. Dean gathers up his duffle and heads down the hall to the communal bathroom, ready for a shower. He smells like the road — dried sweat, the leather of Baby’s seats, and fast food.

Last night was... rough. James Novak, predictably, did not react well to having a stranger ask him to call his long-lost daughter. Dean can’t get the guy out of his head, thinking about how stiff he held himself as he stared at Dean, how expressionless his face was toward the end of their conversation.

“I’d rather leave Claire out of my life,” he’d said, and Dean had to strongly resist the urge to punch him in the face.

Some part of him thought _that jaw would break your hand,_ and Dean shoved that idea away.

Then Novak gestured curtly to the door and said, “If you’d please... I’d like to sleep now.”

Dean left, feeling angry and flustered and unsettled and strangely convinced that he has to, _has to_ , convince this jackass to at least tell his daughter he’s alive.

So Dean decided to stay here until he can find Novak again and tell him off properly, without being distracted by his disturbing poker face. Dean can play that game, too, the one where you act like you don’t give a shit but really you care more than anyone. He plays it all the damn time with Sam, with himself, even. He’s willing to bet Novak cares, deep down, and he’s going to drag it out of him. For Claire.

Yeah. This is just about Claire.

The fact that his dissociative periods (Sam’s jargon, not his) are getting worse and something about Novak seems to have triggered the worst one yet — one that lasted most of the night — well, Dean’s just going to repress that shit like it’s his job to.

There’s someone in one of the other shower stalls, so Dean sets up camp on the opposite end, just in case the occupant is Seth. God forbid Dean have to try to make small talk with the guy.

His shower is quick, perfunctory. Dean doesn’t even jerk off, though it’s been awhile and he kind of needs to unclog the pipes. He hears the other person turn off their shower and putter around near the sink area, and for a second he considers just turning the water back on and waiting until they’re gone, but what the hell. Hunters aren’t social creatures. Whoever it is, as long as it’s not Seth, will probably leave him alone. Dean wraps a towel around his waist and pulls the curtain back.

James Novak stands at one of the two sinks, wearing oversized pajamas and brushing his teeth with a weirdly intense look of concentration on his face. Then he sees Dean and nearly chokes on his mouthful of fluoride.

“Relax, man,” Dean says, walking up to the other sink. “I’m not here to beat you up, Jesus.” He rummages around in the duffle he left on the floor opposite the showers, pulling out his own toothbrush. “Uh, you got any extra toothpaste? I forgot mine I guess.” He smiles sweetly. Novak looks ill, but he silently hands his over. “Thanks. You’re a lifesaver, buddy.”

“James.”

He’s so quiet Dean almost doesn’t hear him, even in the echo chamber of the tiled room.

“Pardon?”

“James, just call me James. Not... buddy.”

Dean looks at Novak — James — now back to brushing his teeth, pointedly staring at the mirror directly in front of him. Dean cautiously sets the toothpaste down on James’ sink.

“Right, so you’re giving me the whole ‘we’re-not-friends’ shtick. Fair enough.”

James spits into the sink, not looking back up when he says, “We’re not friends.”

That really shouldn’t bother Dean, yet it kind of does.

“Well, maybe we could be. If you’d call Claire.”

There’s an abrupt shift in James’ face. Dean watches the constipated look fade and an angry blush settle in. He scoops up all his belongings — not much, just a tattered towel and a few toiletries — and pushes past Dean toward the hallway.

“ _Fuck_ ,” Dean says under his breath, quickly following after him. He doesn’t know why, but he can’t let this go. “Hey, Novak! Come on, it’s your friggin’ daughter!”

He’s taken aback when James whirls on him, right in the middle of the hall.

“You don’t know me,” he says, voice low and dangerous, and Dean has a visceral reaction to it, like he’s heard it before, like that tone means something to him, and he has to blink back against the moisture in his eyes just to focus. “You have no idea what I’ve been through. I am not bringing Claire into any of this.” James has been avoiding Dean’s eyes, but now he looks directly at him. “Leave me alone, Dean.”

Then he turns to his own room and slams the door. Dean stands in the hallway, his heart beating way too fast for this type of confrontation, his eyes still watery and unfocused.

_What the hell. What the hell, what the hell —_

“I’m sorry,” he says to no one who’s listening, “I didn’t mean to —”

He loses track of how long he stands there before Sam finds him and drags him back to their room.


	5. Peace Offering

Not to be deterred, even for the sake of his own sanity, Dean corners James again that afternoon.

Sam and Eileen drove over to North Platte for food, but Dean decided not to leave the Bend, not yet. Sam fretted over the decision, but thankfully Eileen gently led him away.

Dean needs some time to figure out this shit with James on his own.

He knows what he’s doing. He thinks. And even if he doesn’t, Dean can project confidence like nobody’s business when he’s confronting a suspect, which is how he’s decided to treat James. Like a suspect in his own disappearance.

It might not be the best plan, but it’s all he’s got.

When Dean sees James sitting alone, leaning against the bunkhouse and eating a sandwich, he gets that feeling of finally cornering a mark. He’s going to figure out what happened to this guy, why he abandoned his family and let everyone think he was dead, if it’s the last thing he does.

Of course, James is clearly going to make this difficult.

“What are you doing,” he says, rather than asks, when Dean ungracefully plops down next to him.

“Eating lunch.” Dean pulls a melted candy bar that’s probably at least a week old out of his back pocket. “What does it look like?”

James raises an eyebrow disdainfully.

“That is not lunch.”

Dean takes a huge bite, chewing loudly, antagonizing. “Anything is lunch if you eat it at the right time, man.”

James doesn’t respond, looking away, jaw twitching.

“Hey,” Dean says once he’s swallowed his bite. “Look, I feel like we got off on the wrong foot here. You’re right, I don’t know anything about you other than you’re Claire’s dad and you disappeared a while back. And hell, maybe you have your reasons, or you think you do, for not getting in touch with her. But she’s a good kid, and I care about her.” James closes his eyes and tilts his head back against the building, but Dean keeps talking. “So yeah, I think you should talk to her, but I can’t make you. But maybe you can help me understand what’s happening here.”

He watches James drag the toe of his dirty tennis shoe through the dirt.

“I don’t know how it’s any of your business,” he finally responds.

Playing hard-to-get. Dean can work with that.

“It’s not, other than where it concerns my friend. But...” Dean trails off, considering. He knows what it's like to move through the world by yourself, always with one eye out for monsters in the dark. There are a few angles he can play here. “You’ve probably been alone for a long time, and here you’ve just shown up in a hunter’s camp. Maybe you need to talk to someone who might understand what it’s like to have their life wrecked by the supernatural.”

James stays silent.

“It’s just a guess,” Dean tacks on. He studies the other man. James’ profile is sharp, hair a mess, eyes downcast and slightly watery, focused on the ground.

“My life was not wrecked by the supernatural.” There’s a long pause. James still doesn’t look at Dean. “I wrecked my own life.”

It’s not what Dean expected, but at least it’s something.

“Okay, so then why are you here? Why do you need hunters’ help? And I mean, no offense, but why Seth? Guy’s a bag of dicks.”

The corner of James’ mouth ticks up so fast Dean almost misses it.

“I do have a problem I think they could help me with,” he says quietly. “I hunt sometimes, and I’ve heard about this place from others. They said he’s got good resources. He can find anything... unnatural.”

“What are you looking for?”

Dean’s not really expecting an answer, given the tense undercurrent of their few encounters so far, so he’s surprised when James looks at him searchingly. It’s like he’s sizing Dean up, determining whether he’s worthy of telling the truth to. Dean tries to keep his face as still as possible, but it’s sort of hard not to look away in the face of such intensity. James looks at Dean like he can see underneath his skin, straight to the core of what makes Dean _Dean_ , and Dean knows himself well enough to know he’s mostly made of booze, bloodlust and bullshit.

Whatever James sees in him, it must not be any of those things, because he actually seems to soften the longer he looks at Dean. 

“Angel grace,” he says finally, and Dean’s stomach twists and his head pounds and suddenly it’s like he’s somewhere else. And then James is in front of him but it’s not James, not really, and he’s saying _Dean, it’s gone, he took it with him_ in a panicked voice. And then it’s over and all that’s left is James and his neglected sandwich, shaking him and saying, “Dean! Dean!”

“Sorry,” Dean mutters, rubbing at his eyes with his knuckles. “Sorry. I, uh — I have some weird tendency to kind of space out sometimes. Sorry.”

His head still aches, so Dean closes his eyes and puts his head between his knees. He doesn’t know what the hell that was but it wasn’t pleasant, and it wasn’t like all the other times.

He feels a tentative hand touch his back. _Jesus._ Now the guy he wanted to interrogate is attempting to comfort him. Dean shrugs James’ hand away, sitting back up and blinking. The sun’s too bright now. He cups a hand over his eyes and looks back at James.

James stares openly back at Dean, his face full of unchecked concern at a level that Dean’s never seen from anyone else, except maybe Bobby or Sam. He blinks, just to be sure he’s seeing right, but then that hard mask of indifference settles over James’ face again.

“Are you alright?” he asks gruffly.

Dean attempts a cocky, devil-may-care smile. It comes out weak and lopsided.

“I get migraines,” he says. “Um, about the...”

_What were we talking about?_

James stands up, holding a hand out to Dean, who stares at it, confounded.

“You shouldn’t be outside with a migraine,” James says. “It makes them worse.” He points in the general direction of the sun, which is indeed blinding right now.

“Right,” Dean says. He hesitantly reaches out and grabs James’ hand. It’s rough, a little sweaty. As soon as he’s on his feet James quickly pulls it away.

“You dropped your candy bar.” Dean looks at the dirt. _Well, fuck._ Yeah, he did. “Come on, I’ve got extra sandwich stuff inside.”

His head aches less as they walk down the dimly lit hall of the bunkhouse and into James’ room. Whatever switch Dean may have subconsciously flipped to cause James to want to look out for him, he’s grateful for it. He sits on James’ bed and nods yes to turkey, no to mayo, yes to cheese. Dean tries to remember the next point of his interrogation as he watches James carefully assemble the sandwich on the old desk in the corner of the room.

 _Angel grace_. Right. Incredibly valuable, even more incredibly rare. The angels all fell to Earth five, six years ago, but most made it back to Heaven as far as Dean’s aware. He hasn’t really dealt with them since the apocalypse. But he knows some hunters try to find remnants of their grace, leftovers that tend to surge into the ground when the angels die, growing plants and trees in their place. He’s heard that grace can heal people if it’s extracted, not that he’s ever seen proof of that — humans who try to dig out grace tend to get themselves blown up. There are some things you just shouldn’t mess with, and anything to do with angels is at the top of Dean’s list. Been there, done that, got the _I Was Almost an Angel Condom_ t-shirt.

“What do you need healed?” Dean asks bluntly as James turns to hand him his sandwich, wrapped in a little blue napkin.

“Pardon?” James asks, head tilted in confusion.

 _Huh,_ Dean thinks, _that’s kinda cute_. Then he grimaces. Wrong frame of mind for scoping out a mark.

“People who go looking for grace... They treat it like medicine, and they don’t even think about how volatile it is,” Dean explains around a mouthful of turkey sandwich. James raises his eyebrows at him, so Dean swallows loudly before continuing. “I figured you must be trying to heal something, or someone else.”

“Yes, well...” James leans back against the desk and looks at the ground. “It’s for me.”

So that’s probably all Dean’s going to get out of him, but it’s better than nothing.

He chews on his sandwich thoughtfully, and James just stares at him. Dean almost says something snippy about basic social skills and the lack thereof, but James did make him lunch. He swallows, guilty.

“So,” Dean says, “why don’t you let me and my brother help you find it?”

James blinks rapidly.

“I’m — What?”

“My brother, Sam, and I, we used to actually run into angels a lot. Helped one track down her grace, even. Sam’s real good with the research stuff, so he can help you with the signs Seth said you’ve been tracking. And me?” Dean smiles his most roguish smile and spreads his arms. “I’m the muscle. Between the three of us — well, four, Sam’s wife Eileen, she’s great — I’m sure we can find what you’re looking for.”

James doesn’t move, doesn’t say anything. He just looks at Dean blankly, hands gripping the desk tightly.

“Um.” Dean scratches the back of his neck, suddenly and oddly self-conscious. “I just thought we’d be better than Seth.”

James looks away, back at the ground. He breathes in deeply, and Dean watches his chest rise and fall under his ratty t-shirt. He looks thin, grungy. And yet he still gave Dean a sandwich, and who knows how much food he can actually afford?

It’s strange, how badly Dean wants James to say yes, to go with them. He doesn’t think this is just about Claire anymore, but he doesn’t know what more there is to his sudden, obsessive need to have this man open up more to him.

“Why —” James begins, then starts again, something strained in his voice that Dean doesn’t understand, “Why would you want to help me?”

 _You intrigue me,_ Dean thinks, but he says, “Call it helping a friend of a friend.”

James’ eyes move up to hold Dean’s, and they’re less intense now, more subdued and weary.

“Of course,” he says. “For Claire.”

“Like that’s a bad thing, that someone cares about your kid?” Dean snaps back, combative.

James sighs, running a hand over his mouth.

“No, no, of course not. I just...” He trails off, slumping a little more against the desk.

Dean looks at the remainder of his sandwich, almost tempted to give it to James, he looks so small and sad. _This is ridiculous,_ he scolds himself. _Asshole won’t even talk to his daughter, stop caring about him!_

“Thank you for the offer, Dean,” James says quietly, “but I’ve already discussed all of this with Seth and the others. They promised they’d help.”

The sense of utter rejection that washes over Dean surprises him. He balls up his napkin in one fist, trying not to squash the sandwich in the other. Stupid, to expect James to just say, “Yes, of course I’ll come with you, and then I’ll reunite with Claire!” That’s not how life works. Dads are shitty. Dean of all people knows that.

“Well,” Dean says, and he stands, ready to make an awkward exit. James bites his lip, but he doesn’t move toward Dean at all. “I guess the offer still stands, should you change your mind. I’ll just be down the hall.”

He walks out, not looking back to see the sad way James watches him, but he feels those blue eyes on his back until he’s in his own room. Dean closes the door a little harder than necessary, satisfied by the way the slam rattles the wall. Sam and Eileen are still out, so he plops down on his bed and eats the rest of his turkey sandwich out of spite.

Any other person would probably give up at this point, count James Novak as a lost cause, a loser who abandoned his family, who only cares about himself. Dean should probably give up, too, because really, who is this guy to him? The dad of a girl they hunt with occasionally? He’s nobody.

The thing is, Dean can think that, but he doesn’t believe it. James feels... _important._ Consequential. It bothers Dean that the guy looks like no one has fed him a decent meal or properly washed his clothes in weeks. It bothers him how shocked he sounded when he asked Dean why he’d offer up help. It bothers him how James looked at him, out in the yard, like Dean _mattered_ to him, like Dean’s well being was worth being concerned about. Why? Why would he look at Dean like that?

“What am I missing?” Dean asks the wall, and he doesn’t know if he’s talking to himself or his ghost.


	6. Castiel

Alarm bells wake Dean from a fitful sleep, and he nearly falls out of bed while scrambling for the gun he placed on the desk.

“What?” a voice slurs from the other end of the room. Sam. Dean wonders when they got back, how long he’s been out. He only vaguely recalls going to sleep sometime in the late afternoon, after his headache started up again. Thank God it’s gone now, or this fucking alarm would be splitting his forehead right down the middle.

“Jesus,” Sam hisses, and Dean sees him struggling to pull on his pants. “It’s the middle of the night. This better be something important.”

Eileen, who apparently was hidden behind Sam’s massive bulk, slips around him, already dressed except for her shoes which she quickly gathers from the floor. Sam must have woken her.

The three of them make their way down the hall, converging with some other hunters to funnel out the door into the night. Dean finds himself looking for James in the crowd gathered between the yard and the main house. He spots him standing off to the side, no jacket on, arms crossed tightly over his chest. His tennis shoes are worn and muddy; his jeans have a hole in one leg. Dean tugs guiltily at his own jacket, chilly but warm enough. James glances toward him and doesn’t look away, and Dean holds his gaze until Sam says, “What are you staring at?”

“Nothing,” Dean mutters, looking down at the ground.

The group of hunters huddles closer together, drawn toward the center of the yard. The alarms continue to blare from the bunkhouse and the main house as Seth makes his way to the front of the crowd.

“Listen up!” he calls, and Dean snickers as his voice pitches unreasonably high. Sam elbows him in the side. “We had a ward tripped on the eastern perimeter. An angelic ward.”

Immediately the crowd begins to murmur in collective disbelief. Angels just aren’t seen around anymore — anywhere. There’s a known portal to Heaven somewhere in Utah, but even there none of the creatures have been spotted in months.

Dean and Sam tangled with a few back in their heyday, and they were always outmatched. Angels can teleport, they’re unnaturally strong, they smite lesser beings without a word. Dean looks at Sam and Eileen and they stare back at him, wide-eyed and at a loss.

“I don’t have my blade,” Sam whispers. “Do you?”

Dean shakes his head. They found a few angel blades years ago, after some battle that left a small bar littered with the bodies of the fallen vessels. They usually keep the blades in the Impala, just in case, but a few weeks ago Dean put them away in the bunker for safekeeping after cleaning out Baby’s trunk. At the time they hadn’t seemed useful or necessary.

“How many are there?” a woman’s voice calls out from the crowd.

“We don’t know at this point in time,” Seth says smoothly. “Our priority is to keep them away from the main house. We don’t want them to get their hands on any of the weapons in there.”

“How are we supposed to do that?” someone else cries, and the crowd dissolves into at least twenty different conversations at once. Sam tries to sign out the ensuing argument to Eileen, but Dean’s not paying attention to them. He looks for James.

He’s gone. Dean turns around, looking over the crowd, suddenly frantically worried. He sees more than two dozen hunters gathered around Seth, all dressed in varying degrees from pajamas to work flannel, none recognizable.

 _Just like him, to just take off..._ Dean’s not even sure where that thought came from, but it seems fitting. 

Then he spots James, the white smudge of his t-shirt disappearing into the black of the woods behind the bunkhouse. Headed east, toward where the wards were tripped.

“Fuck,” Dean curses under his breath. “Fuck, fuck.”

“Dean?” Eileen asks, watching him carefully. “What’s wrong?”

“Listen, I’ll be right back,” he says, then he takes off.

“Dean!” Sam calls out behind him, but Dean ducks away from the crowd, walking like he’s going to go into the bunkhouse before dodging around it at the last second, heading for the spot in the woods James walked through.

Dean draws his gun once he’s in the trees. The woods aren’t too thick, and the leaves on the higher branches are sparse enough to let in light from the full moon. He follows the trail of broken brush James left, walking as fast as possible to catch up.

It doesn’t take him too long to catch sight of James tramping through bushes in his bright white shirt, but before Dean can call out his name James whips around, holding out a slim, silver blade pointed in Dean’s direction. An angel blade.

“Where did you get that?” Dean asks, hands up in surrender, torn somewhere between awe and fear. Angel blades aren’t easy to come by, and something about the way James holds his says he knows how to wield it easily. Sure enough, James rolls his eyes and flips the blade, gamely catching it and slipping it under the waistband of his jeans.

“Go back, Dean,” he says, turning away and walking east again.

Dean’s never been that great at following orders that come from someone other than John Winchester. He jogs to reach James, not bothering to hide his heavy footfalls. He doesn’t want to get stabbed, after all.

“Where did you get that?” Dean repeats, pitching his voice low and beginning to walk on his heels, gingerly avoiding stepping on branches and crunchy leaves once he’s side by side with James.

James doesn’t respond, and Dean huffs, frustrated. _Okay, so that’s how it’s gonna be._ Well, just because the guy tends to be an ass doesn’t mean Dean’s willing to let him die alone. He matches James step for step and, other than an unreadable glance from the corner of his eye, James doesn’t acknowledge Dean’s presence.

They stop once they’ve reached the far edge of the tree line, staying under the cover of the branches. The moon illuminates the field in front of them, barren in the cold weather. Dean scans the area, alert for any movement. 

Nothing.

“What do you know of angels, Dean?” James asks suddenly, quietly.

Dean turns to him, momentarily taken aback by James’ sharp profile, lit pale blue in the low light of the moon, his eyes unnaturally bright. He blinks, trying to pull himself together. “Uh...”

James turns and raises one eyebrow at him. It's such a bitchy expression that Dean has to hold back a laugh.

“Not a lot,” he says, after his odd reactions to the man in front of him seem more under control. “I mean, Sam and I have fought the baddest of the bad of those sons of bitches —" He refrains from name-dropping Lucifer in case James isn’t aware the devil himself walked the Earth. Twice. "— but we never got too close if we could help it. They’re super strong, super fast. Like to smite first, ask questions later. They act like they're so superior. And they all hate humans.”

A pained expression passes over James’ face, and he turns back to the field. Dean doesn’t know what he said wrong. He starts to ask, only to suddenly feel an unseen force pushing hard against his chest, his words stolen in a shout of surprise.

Dean’s fairly used to hitting the dirt (and the wall, and the table, and the concrete) hard on the job, but getting decked by an angel ranks toward the top end of the unpleasant supernatural body slams spectrum. He flies at least ten feet backward, propelled into a tree which he hits square on the shoulder with a pained grunt.

Groaning, Dean shifts in the dirt to see two angels wearing the bodies of a grown man and a preteen girl standing on either side of James. He holds out his blade, backing slowly away from them. Dean struggles to get to his feet — not that he’ll be of much use without a viable weapon.

“You,” the little girl angel says with a sneer, eyes glowing in a way that promises nothing good. At first Dean thinks she means him because, well, he’s a Winchester, and he and Sam have a certain reputation. But the girl angel focuses that disturbingly intense hatred on James, advancing on him with her own blade drawn. "You're supposed to be dead."

The other angel doesn’t move, watching James back away with a smirk on his face. Dean wonders if they even remember him, that guy they chunked into a tree thirty seconds ago.

“Do you have any idea how far we’ve tracked you?” the adult angel asks. “When we first heard the rumors we thought it couldn’t be true; it couldn’t just resurface. After all this time? And now...” He laughs, and suddenly a blade appears in his hand. “Well, now we know you survived after all, though that won’t be true for much longer.”

“Now, Binah, Hod,” James pleads, still stumbling away from them, and _how the fuck does he know their names?_ “We can discuss this. I mean Heaven no harm.”

The girl glowers and jerks her blade in Dean’s direction.

“Then why are you back with him?”

Oh, so she did notice Dean creeping up... _Wait — back?_

She flicks her wrist and Dean slams back into the tree with a loud grunt, and two times in one night is a little much for his aging body. There are definitely stars floating at the edges of his vision now, but he’s coherent enough to hear James yell, “Stop! You came for me, so just take me!”

_I’ll hold them off, I’ll hold them all off..._

The pressure holding Dean against the tree relents and he falls to the ground once more, gasping for breath, head throbbing. He rolls onto the dirt, disoriented, looking up just in time to see the girl angel lunge toward James.

She’s quick, much quicker than him, and he barely manages to parry any of the swipes she makes with her blade. The other angel hangs back, satisfied to watch and clearly amused. From somewhere behind him Dean hears the sound of the crowd of hunters, making their way through the woods in search of the threat.

 _They aren’t going to get here in time,_ Dean thinks, trying to get up, but he’s unsteady on his feet and even his thoughts feel slightly slurred. Concussion, probably. Again.

Because he’s feeling a little off-balance and thinking a lot of fuzzy thoughts, Dean does something pretty stupid, which is really par for the course with him, and rushes the girl angel.

Fortunately, she’s so focused on snarling at James that she doesn’t notice him until he’s already thrown both arms around her in attempt to tackle her. She shrugs him off easily, but the distraction gives James enough time to push his blade through her right bicep. She screams in pain, a human sound that devolves into something... other, and Dean curls into a ball with his eyes scrunched tight and his hands over his ears to protect himself from the blood-curdling screech. When he opens his eyes, he sees the girl angel stumbling away from James, her upper arm bleeding both blood and a pale blue light. Grace.

The male angel shakes his head.

“Binah,” he says in a level tone, “calm down and heal yourself.” Then he turns to Dean, still on the ground, groggily trying to crawl backwards on his hands and heels to get away from the immediate threat. “I’m so _sick_ ,” the angel hisses, “of the Castiel and the Winchesters show. It’s truly getting old.”

 _I’m always happy to bleed for the Winchesters._ Dean blinks, trying to focus, unsure what just happened, if that thought was even his, halting in his frantic scramble away from the angel.

James practically trips over his own feet to stand between the advancing angel and Dean.

“Hod,” he says, pleading, but the angel just twirls his blade in his hand.

“I respected you, once,” Hod says. “What a sorry, pathetic _thing_ you’ve become.”

Dean has no idea what’s happening here or what on Earth these angels are talking about, but he knows, he _knows_ he can’t let Hod hurt James, especially not while James is trying to protect him.

The other hunters sound closer now, and when Hod’s eyes flicker briefly to the woods, Dean sees his chance. He sticks out the leg closest to James as far as it can go, and when Hod turns back to bring the blade down, he swipes James’ legs out from under him.

James hits the dirt with a squawk of surprise as the blade swings through the empty air above him, and Dean briefly feels relief but also a splitting pain in his head. He starts to list slightly to one side, groggily protesting against his own body. The fight’s not over.

Luckily, James recovers quickly from the shock of his sudden fall, and while Hod tries to regroup and swipe the blade back down, James thrusts his up, straight into the angel’s stomach.

This time the blast is deafening. Blue light streams from Hod’s gaping mouth and eyes, then the _boom_ of a small explosion leaves both James and Dean curled around each other on the ground as the after-shock dies away.

When they open their eyes, Binah stands right in front of them with her blade raised. Dean, out of ideas and head aching in pain, braces himself for the final blow.

It doesn’t come.

Binah’s mouth opens and closes in shock, her eyes wide and filled with terror, staring at something behind James and Dean. Dean turns to see the group of hunters has broken through the tree line, led by Seth, who’s pointing a gun straight at the angel’s head. Dean expects her to realize any minute now that no gun could possibly harm her, but Seth fires anyway, just as Binah says, “You can’t be…” and James cries, “Wait!”

The body of the young girl drops to the ground, grace sparking out of the hole in her forehead, then bursting in a flood from her dead eyes. Dean buries his face in his hands again, but he distantly hears James screaming.

“No!” he shouts, and when Dean looks up James is frantically crawling to the body. “Why did you do that?”

Seth shrugs, an odd, cocksure grin on his face. Dean spots Sam and Eileen behind him, wearing identical, horrified expressions.

“You should be thanking me and my angel-blade bullets for saving your life, Novak.”

James turns from the body to glare at Seth.

“You just murdered a child,” he snaps viciously. “There’s an exorcism for angels! She was wounded, I could have...”

Seth scoffs. “Angels burn their vessels up. That girl’s been dead since she said yes.”

Tears well up in James eyes as he spits, “You foolish, reckless boy. You know nothing about saving people. All you care for is the hunt!”

Though no one was talking before James started shouting, the silence that follows rests heavy on the crowd, charged with a dangerous undercurrent of mutual anger. Dean looks at Seth, and he sees something flash in the other man’s eyes — a spark of deep, inexplicable hatred. 

And then Seth smiles. It’s vile, the way his mouth twists unnaturally, stretching his sallow cheeks, narrowing his puffy eyes.

“Dean,” Seth says quietly, walking over to kneel down next to him, and Dean’s shocked Seth would choose to address him when James is the one throwing out all the insults. He pitches his voice into a low whisper, as if his next words are only for Dean to hear. “Have you ever heard of the angel they call Castiel?”


	7. Concussion Talking

Dean dreams in broken fragments. Sam’s a constant in these dreams, riding shotgun with him in the Impala, stealing fries off his plate at old diners, scolding him for talking to the walls again. Eileen’s there, too, sometimes, signing naughty words and laughing, shotgunning beers next to Dean at bars.

James is in the dreams, too, but he’s blurry, never quite clear in what he’s saying or doing. He wears a trench coat. Dean misses that damn coat when he sees it in his dreams. He wonders what happened to it.

///

Sam knew they shouldn’t have come to The Bend, but he didn’t expect any of this.

“He’s going to be fine,” Eileen says, sitting next to him in the front seat and reassuringly patting his leg. “It’s only a concussion, Sam.” She’s trying for reassuring and definitely missing the mark.

Sam looks in the rearview mirror to see Dean’s eyes blinking lazily again.

“Dean!” he snaps, and Eileen must be watching, too, because she crawls into the back and cradles Dean’s face in her hands.

“Dean, stay awake please,” she says, and her voice is shaking. Sam turns back to the road, gripping the wheel tightly. “Do you know where you are?”

His muttered answer is unintelligible.

“Try again,” Eileen says gently, raising his head so she can read his lips.

“Kansas...oh, wait, Nebraska,” Dean says, slightly slurred. Then, “Where’s Cas?”

“Dean, who?” Sam asks, pressing down harder on the gas pedal to speed around a semi. Siri pipes up to inform him that his exit is in two miles.

He hears a shuffling noise in the back seat, and Eileen says, “No, Dean, honey, you can’t lie down and sleep.” She never calls him honey. She’s scared; Sam’s scared. This doesn’t seem like the aftermath of a normal concussion.

“I dunno,” Dean says lazily, apparently unconcerned. “I dunno where he went, but he was here.” Then he hiccups, and the carefree voice transitions into something more frantic, wet like he’s trying to hold back a sob. “I think we left him again!”

“Who, Dean? James?” Eileen asks. “Dean, he went home, remember? You passed out right after the two of you fought the angels. James decided to leave Seth’s camp because he was angry over what happened, and he said he wanted to go back home. You were awake; he told you goodbye.”

“Not Jimmy.” Dean sounds flustered. “He’s dead.”

Sam meets Eileen’s eyes in the rearview mirror as he takes the exit ramp. The hospital should be less than five minutes away. Sam’s starting to develop a headache of his own, right at the temples. He reaches up with one hand to rub at his forehead.

“He’s not dead,” Eileen says with infinite patience. “He went home.”

“That’s not his home.” Sam can see Dean scrambling to sit up more fully, long limbs struggling to find purchase in the cramped backseat. “He lives with us.”

“Dean,” Sam says, trying to sound as even-keel as possible, “what’s the last thing you remember?”

“Cas,” Dean says simply, and he abruptly goes quiet. Then Eileen shouts, “DEAN MICHAEL WINCHESTER, DO NOT CLOSE YOUR EYES ON ME AGAIN!” Sam nearly runs the car off the road.

“Jesus,” Dean mutters, and Sam curses under his breath.

“Sorry,” he hears Eileen say from the back seat, “but you can’t sleep right now.”

“I’m tired,” Dean says petulantly. Sam can hear him moving around again. “We should call him.”

Finally, a sign with a red cross comes into view. The hospital, straight ahead.

“Call who?” Eileen asks.

“Cas,” Dean says again, and Sam wonders who the hell he thinks he’s talking about. Who do they know whose name starts with a C? Claire? That’s nowhere close. Crowley? Dead for three years, killed in the battle against Amara, the one where she killed Lucifer and nearly God, too. And she also hurt — Sam shakes his head as he pulls into the drive and a thought occurs to him.

“Dean, do you mean Cassie?”

Dean scoffs.

“No, he hates it when you call him that. Don’t you hate it, Cas?”

“He looks like he’s going to pass out,” Eileen says grimly, and Sam whips into a parking spot, not caring that the Impala’s crooked and Dean would bitch about it if he were fully lucid. He turns to see Eileen slapping lightly at Dean’s cheeks, but his brother’s eyes are unfocused, staring into the distance. “Dean,” she says, and Sam calls out his name, too. Dean blinks slowly, then looks at Sam, eyes watering like he’s about to cry.

“Oh my god,” Dean says. “We left him there, Sammy.”

Sam looks at Eileen and signs, “ _Can you help me get him in?”_ She nods.

He jumps out of the front seat, coming around to open the door on Dean’s side, catching his brother when he practically falls out of the car.

“Dean.” Sam grits his teeth. “A little help, man. Can you stand?”

Dean lurches unsteadily to his feet, and between Sam and Eileen they manage to get him inside, though he protests once he realizes they’ve brought him to the ER.

Once the nurses manage to corral Dean to an examination room, Sam collapses in a cheap, blue plastic chair next to the check-in desk to complete the paperwork. Eileen takes one look at him, then goes to get coffee. When she comes back, pressing a tepidly warm Styrofoam cup into his hands, Sam drinks it without question.

“So,” she says after a while, breaking the silence, then signs, “ _That time was different. Who’s Cas?”_

Sam rubs his temple, right where that headache is starting up again.

“ _No one_ ,” he signs, watching the door and waiting for a doctor to come out and tell them Dean’s alright. “ _We don’t know any Cas_.”

///

Dean’s a little pissed Sam and Eileen brought him to the ER, but he understands the sentiment. He’s dragged Sam’s ass to the hospital more than once, for both minor and major incidents. Brothers worry. It’s in the handbook or something.

They take him to a motel after the doctors release him, but Dean’s not allowed to sleep for a while because of his concussion. So Sam and Eileen keep him awake, filling in the gaps in the night.

Dean remembers fighting the angels, getting thrown around a lot, James trying to protect him. He vaguely recalls the angels talking to James like they knew him, which still doesn’t make a lot of sense, but James did say he was looking for grace. Maybe he ran afoul of them before. He remembers Seth shooting the little girl angel, how angry it made James. Then Seth said something to him, but Dean’s not sure what. Sam says that’s when he passed out.

“You woke up pretty quick, but your head hurt and you were really out of it,” Sam explains while Dean and Eileen play a card game on the bed. Dean’s head still hurts, but any time he starts to lean over to sleep Eileen hits his leg with the back of her hand. “James and some of the other hunters were pissed at Seth for shooting a kid...” Sam drifts off, and Dean looks over at his brother. Sam shudders. “God, I... I wasn’t expecting it to be a teenager, you know? I mean, maybe not even that...”

“She — the angel — did try to kill us,” Dean points out, but he knows what Sam means. Demons almost always take adult vessels, and if they don’t there’s always exorcisms. Maybe James knows an exorcism for angels, but he’s never heard of one before.

“Yeah,” Sam says, but he sounds unconvinced. “Well, anyway. We took you to the car to get you to the hospital. A couple other people planned to leave, too.”

“Right.” Dean thinks he remembers James telling him goodbye. “James went home?”

Eileen shrugs as she flips through her cards.

“He said he wanted to go back to Missouri. We assumed that’s where he lives.”

Dean wants to say _that’s not right,_ but he doesn’t. James never mentioned any home base, because why would he tell Dean something like that? They talked a grand total of four times, and most of those discussions were slightly antagonistic.

“He wanted to save the girl, and he tried to keep me safe,” Dean says quietly, laying down his hand of cards on the ugly bed cover. “He’s a good guy.”

When he looks up, Sam and Eileen are both staring at him, incredulous.

“What?”

Sam says, “Uh, Claire?” while Eileen signs angrily, _“He left his daughter!”_

Right. Dean sort of forgot about Claire. He’s a dick, making this all about him and his own muddled feelings toward the guy.

“Look,” he says, unsure how to explain his gut feeling that James _means something_ , something Dean’s not really comfortable poking at. “Can we hold off on telling Claire about him? I just — I think we need to check him out more.”

Sam raises his eyebrows.

“Check James out more. Right. Good, Dean, that’s great. Let your libido guide you on this one.”

Dean glares at him. He didn’t finally come out to Sam for his brother to hold that shit over his head at the first available opportunity.

“Fuck you, Sam,” he says. Eileen lifts her hands to protest, but Dean ignores her. “He saved my damn life back there, sorry I don’t wanna throw him under the bus immediately after. Let’s research this before we make some rash move, that’s all I’m saying!”

“Boys,” Eileen says, a warning, but Sam’s already leaning forward in his chair toward the side of the bed where Dean’s sitting.

“You’re the one making the rash moves,” he says, voice strained. “You ran off after this guy, straight into the arms of the angels, man! Do you have any idea how worried I was when I saw you lying on the ground? Or when you started spouting off this crap about someone named Cas on the way to the hospital?”

Dean blinks at his brother, trying to process all that. He’s not used to Sam worrying about him so openly now that he spends all his time with Eileen. It’s kind of touching, in a way, though Dean knows he should feel bad for making Sam stress over him. But the other thing...

“Who the fuck is Cas?” he asks, looking between Eileen and Sam.

“We were hoping you’d know,” Eileen says. “You kept saying you’d left him.”

 _Huh_. He can’t remember anything about any Cas. _Cassie, maybe?_ ... _Nope, definitely not her._

“I don’t know,” Dean says. “Concussion talking.”

Speaking of which, Dean’s incredibly tired. Fighting angels and then your brother will do that to you. He yawns, looking over at the alarm clock on the bedside table. They’ve been up all night.

“You can go to sleep now,” Eileen says. Sam starts to protest, but she cuts him off. “We should all get some sleep. We can talk about this later.”

Now that he has permission, Dean collapses back against the flat pillows, knocking all the cards off the bed onto the floor. Eileen huffs in irritation, but he’s too exhausted to feel bad.

“Fine,” Sam says, “but for the record, I think Claire deserves to know her dad’s alive.” He raises his eyebrows at Dean, who closes his eyes petulantly to avoid Sam’s glare. “Doesn’t this scenario remind you of anyone else, Dean?”

“Okay,” he hears Eileen say, blessedly stopping another argument before it can devolve into fighting over the ghost of John, “bedtime for all Winchesters.”

There’s a click as the lights turn out, plunging the room into darkness. Dean rolls away from the other bed, but he can hear his brother and sister-in-law shuffling around over there. He stares at the wall, weary but still wide awake and feeling strangely ashamed, but not about keeping secrets from Claire. He can’t quite pinpoint the origins of his guilt, but he thinks it might have something to do with the sad, tired eyes of James Novak.


	8. Broken Seraph

Dean goes home alone.

Really, he knew Sam and Eileen never intended to stay with him past the point where they no longer worried about Dean dropping dead in his sleep. They’re newlyweds. Expecting them to follow him back to the bunker is just ridiculous; they’ve got more stops on their honeymoon tour that he dragged them away from.

So they pick Eileen’s car up from The Bend, not speaking to anyone there. The gold Continental still sits parked in front of the farmhouse, and Dean spares a moment to wonder who would drive that monstrosity. And then he heads back to Lebanon.

Nearly a week passes in complete and utter boredom. Sam and Eileen video call every now and then to check in and tell Dean where they are — the Grand Canyon, Las Vegas, San Francisco. Dean smiles and asks for souvenirs, and when they hang up he cleans like it’s his new religion, falling to his knees on the kitchen floor and scrubbing at the tile until all he sees is his own reflection. Then he moves on to the war room, the bedrooms, the garage. He cleans the guns and watches a lot of Netflix and drinks maybe a little too much beer. He should pick up that last hunt, the stakeout on the vampire nest, but when he calls his contact in Cheyenne it’s already been taken care of.

Dean wallows, adrift without Sam just down the hall and with no real motivation to find another case. He wonders if this is his life now, now that Sammy finally decided he wanted something more and went after the girl.

He knew from the moment Sam told him about his long Skype calls with Eileen that everything would change; he should have prepared himself better for this. He’s tried not to be selfish for once in his damn life, to let Sam have this one thing because God knows his brother deserves it. But letting go is hard, especially when Dean finds himself drifting off with increasing regularity — mumbling under his breath in the shower, while dusting the top shelves in the library, in bed at night — and losing tracking of all sense of place and time.

Dean scares himself, sometimes, wondering how long it will be before he has one of these “episodes” on the road or in the middle of a hunt. He doesn’t want to be alone if that happens, but he can’t imagine calling Sam and saying, “Hey, can you guys please stick close to me because I’m fucking terrified of something I can’t see?”

He also scares himself because sometimes he thinks he prefers it, staying in this void where he can’t quite grasp what he’s trying to think of, where he doesn’t have to worry about Sam or his loneliness or the fact that he’s getting a little too old to keep saving the world. He shouldn’t want to disappear into himself. Surely that’s not a healthy mindset to have.

So Dean cleans the entire bunker with more vigor, re-reads “Cat’s Cradle” for the tenth time, cries (again) when Robb Stark dies in front of his mother on _Game of Thrones_.

And he wonders where James is, wonders if he needs to call Claire and tell her everything, but mostly he just hopes that wherever James took off to, he’s okay.

///

On his fifth night alone in the bunker, Dean gets a video call.

The trill of his phone ringing rouses him from a beer-induced sleep, and he groggily swipes to accept the call without checking the number. No one video calls him other than Sam and Eileen.

“Hey,” he mumbles, trying to find the right angle where he doesn’t look super depressing. “What’s going on?”

“Dean.”

That’s not Sam’s voice. Dean squints at his phone.

_Oh, shit._

“What now?” he asks Seth, groaning as he rests his head on his free hand. He can feel one of those god-awful headaches forming.

“Still ruminating in your own alcohol-soaked juices, I see.” Seth’s face on the screen is fuzzy, but Dean’s sure he’s smirking. “Is Sam around?”

“No,” Dean snaps, not bothering to elaborate.

Seth clucks his tongue. The reception’s improved some, and Dean can see that he looks even paler and sicker than he did when they were still at The Bend. He bites back a smartass comment about needing to take your daily vitamins.

“Too bad.” Seth starts to move, walking down what looks like the hallway of the main house. “I have big news.”

Dean rubs his eyes wearily.

“Okay, do you wanna share with the class or...?”

Seth stops outside a door. He smiles, and Dean shivers.

“Absolutely,” Seth says. “That’s why I called. I wanted to tell you not to bother Claire Novak. Her father’s dead after all.”

Dean’s stomach lurches and his windpipe seems to shrink. He grabs at the edge of the table to keep from sinking down.

He thinks of James Novak, standing between him and that angel, ready to die for Dean, a total stranger. He thinks of James’ face, full of concern; his weary blue eyes; his worn clothes; his shock at Dean’s offer of help, like no one had ever shown him any care before.

“What?” he says dumbly. “I —” _A voice saying “Dean” urgently, familiarly. He’s been lost..._ Dean blinks. “I just, I just saw him....”

Seth’s smile would more accurately be described as a sneer.

“No, you saw his body perfectly replicated as an angelic vessel for the seraph Castiel.”

_That name…_

“I don’t —”

“I suspected from the beginning,” Seth continues mildly, like he’s talking about the weather and not death and angelic possession. “He seemed a little too peculiar, a little off. Inhuman. And I was right.”

God, Dean’s head hurts. He’s so lost.

“So, I just wanted to drop you a line, let you know I’ve got it handled.” Seth gestures to the door behind him, and Dean dreads finding out what’s behind it but he can’t stop himself from asking, “What did you do?” His voice shakes.

Seth twists the knob, swinging the door open to reveal a dimly lit room.

“See for yourself,” he says.

The camera swings across a tiled, sigil-covered floor that looks like someone’s splattered red paint all over it, only Dean knows that it’s not paint. The Seth pans up slightly, revealing two battered, _flayed_ feet tied tightly with rope to a chair, and Dean yells, “What the fuck have you done?” because it’s suddenly all too obvious.

It’s James in the chair, his hands tied down, too. He’s shirtless, chest covered in bruises and vicious, oozing cuts, some that look almost like wards carved into his skin. His head hangs low, and Dean can’t see his face, but he can see the blood dripping from his ears and matted in his hair, which is covered by some type of helmet, a cruel-looking silver dome. Dean realizes with horror that there are spikes protruding from the helmet, jabbed straight into James’ skull.

Dean’s seen so much gore in his life — decapitated vampires, entrails hanging from hellhound victims, his own brother’s rigid corpse — but something about the violence evident here, the lifeless list of James’ body, Dean just can’t stomach. He barely manages to cover his mouth with his hand before he’s spewing up the beer he just drank, puking it out through his fingers.

The camera twists back to Seth, who actually looks fucking _pleased_ with himself.

“You like the dome?” he asks, seeming to take joy from Dean’s choked retching. “It bypasses the human brain and goes straight for the grace. If you hit just the right spot, the programming kicks in and they start mumbling in Enochian. We got him to tell us his real name in about ten seconds flat. Fortunately, he has just enough grace left to keep him alive through all of this... It’s more fun that way.”

Dean wipes his mouth with the back of his hand, glaring at Seth.

“What the fuck is wrong with you?” he rasps. “You can’t just torture people, you...”

“You did,” Seth says, voice low, calm like the sea in the eye of a hurricane. “In Hell. Don’t think I don’t know, Dean. It’s my business to know these things. And I know that right now, angel or not, you probably want to jump in that ridiculous car of yours and come rescue this ‘victim.’” He spits out the last word. “But he’s not even a person, Dean. He’s one of _them_. Have you stopped to consider why you care so much about him?”

But Dean’s already up, rushing down the hall toward the garage with his emergency go-bag slung over his shoulder, clutching his phone tightly in one hand and fumbling for the keys in his pocket with the other.

“You sick fuck, you lay another hand on Cas...”

Dean belatedly realizes what he said just as Seth holds a finger up, wiggling it at the screen.

“Ah ha,” he says, triumphant. “There it is.”

Then Seth hangs up.


	9. Blood

“I’m tired of this game,” Eileen protests, leaning back against the passenger side door and yawning exaggeratedly. “It’s not fair.”

Sam looks at her skeptically before turning back to the road.

“Oh, hey! Queen’s Trucking.” He lightly hits her shoulder and points out the sign, then turns back to her so she can read his lips as he triumphantly crows, “That’s my Q!”

Eileen groans, flipping him off. Sam just smiles.

“See what I mean? You’ve been on this road so much more than me, you know where all the letters are! Oh — there, finally, a ‘Jesus is the answer’ sign.” He can practically hear her rolling her eyes. “That’s my J!”

Sam just smiles and lets Eileen have her win without mentioning that she’s not likely to find a K before he can complete his alphabet. The roads in Kansas are intimately familiar to him in a way a lot of the highways across the country still aren’t, though he’s spent most of his life criss-crossing them in search of the things that go bump in the night. He and Dean drive this road, U.S. 281 between Hastings and Lebanon, frequently. It’s their grocery-shopping route, which has much more pleasant connotations than almost any other route the Winchesters drive.

Sam’s looking for an R — there’s a Route 66 gas station coming up, even though they’re nowhere near the actual Route 66 — when his phone starts to vibrate. Eileen looks at the screen and says, “Hey, it’s Dean.”

He points out the gas station, the big ‘R’ lit on the sign — Eileen mumbles, “You have got to be kidding me” — as he answers the phone.

“Hey, Dean. Guess where we are?”

“Sam! We have to go right now, I need you to...” Dean’s gasping, winded and frightened, and Sam whips the car off the highway, pulling onto a dirt road.

“What’s going on?” Eileen asks, but Sam can’t answer her, too busy trying to understand what Dean’s saying.

“Dean, slow down, man! You’re scaring me.”

“He’s dying!” Dean says, and Sam hears the distinctive sound of a semi horn blasting. “He’s gonna kill him!”

Sam takes a deep breath, trying to fight back his own panic at the idea of Dean driving down the highway in his current state.

“Okay, okay, Dean, listen to me. You need to calm down. Pull over somewhere safe, all right? Eileen and I are on 281 — we’re almost to the bunker. We’ll come find you, get you home.”

Dean swears.

“No, fuck no!” He shouts so loudly Sam has to move the phone away from his ear. “Seth has James, Sam! He showed me... It’s....”

“Fuck.” Sam closes his eyes and lets his head fall back against the headrest. He doesn’t need to hear the rest of that sentence to guess what horrors it would hold. He looks over at Eileen, who’s clearly frustrated at being left out of the conversation. He signs “ _James is in trouble,”_ then asks Dean,“Look, Seth’s a dick, but this is... Did he say _why_?”

“Sammy, please, can you just —” A brief racket as Dean cusses at some driver who cut him off. “I can’t... Can you just get here?”

Sam’s not used to this, this caretaker role he’s been thrust into. He doesn’t like it, hearing his brother panic, watching him lose his lucidity. Dean was his rock for as long as Sam can remember — hell, his earliest memory is of Dean, all of seven years old, solemnly promising Sam that they would sleep with the nightlight on and Dean wouldn’t let any monsters get him, all because it made Sam feel better. Sam doesn’t want the tables to turn, but he owes Dean this.

“I can get to wherever you are, Dean.” He throws the car back into gear. “Pull off somewhere and we’ll meet you. We’ll all go get him together.”

He doesn’t say what he’s thinking — that if Seth wanted Dean to see what he’s done to James it might be too late; that there’s no way the three of them can fight their way through a compound of hunters loyal to that monster. Dean needs Sam to keep the light on for him.

“Okay,” Dean sounds ragged, like maybe he’s been crying. Sam doesn’t understand his sudden, intense attachment to James Novak, but he does understand the fear of knowing someone you care about is in danger, just outside of your reach. “Okay, I’m at that abandoned fruit stand.”

That’s only a few miles south. Sam signs to Eileen that they’re going to pick Dean up, then swings back out onto the highway.

“We’re coming,” he tells his brother. “Don’t worry. We’ll find a way to save him.”

“Okay,” Dean repeats. “Hurry.”

Sam says, “I will” then tells Dean he has to hang up to explain what’s happening to Eileen. Once his brother is off the phone, he turns his head just enough to keep an eye out the window and still let Eileen read his lips.

“I need you to take my phone, reroute its current location to Maxwell, Nebraska, and call 911, then hand the phone to me.”

“Sam?” she asks, confused, but quickly does as he asked.

When she hands the phone over Sam hears the soft voice of a dispatcher saying, “Lincoln County Sheriff’s Office, what’s your emergency?”

“There’s been an assault on County Road 6764. The victim is at the old farmhouse that’s about three miles down the road on the left. I don’t know the exact address.”

“Okay, sir, can you tell me what the injuries are and —”

“You need to hurry,” Sam says, clenching his jaw. _We all need to hurry_. “He’s in bad shape.”

Outing the hunting community like this is cause for exile from the American network, but it’s not like Sam and Dean ever really relied on anyone but each other anyways. Besides, torturing a human is a far worse crime.

He hangs up before the dispatcher can ask any more questions, hoping his brief description will be enough to get help to James in time.

///

Dean’s afraid.

He knows a hell of a lot about fear. A Hell of a lot about fear, capital H. He’s died more than once, watched Sam die more than once. He knows the desperation of trying to stave off a reaper. He never wanted to have to do it again.

Sam told him to lay down in the back seat, to try to calm down, but Dean’s too shaky and guilt consumed to do anything but look at the window, counting the miles to The Bend.

 _You left him again_ , his subconscious reminds him, and Dean wants to yell back at it, _what do you mean “again?!” What do you mean by “him?!”_

Castiel, Seth said. A seraph.

An angel.

Dean rests his forehead against the window of Sam’s crappy old Volvo. He wishes he’d fought Sam, insisted they take the Impala, insisted he let Dean drive. Realistically, though, Dean knows he’s not in good shape right now. Every time he closes his eyes he pictures James’ (Castiel’s?) head hanging low, those spikes drilled into his skull. How long can he survive like that? Sam’s driving at least fifteen, twenty over the speed limit down the two-lane highway, but it’s still at least two and a half hours to The Bend.

_You weren’t fast enough._

“Sam,” Dean says, “can you —”

“I’m already going as fast as I can, Dean.” He can tell Sam’s stressed by how he bites back his words, trimming down his own fear for Dean’s sake, because Dean’s a pathetic mess right now. “Don’t worry. We’re making good time.”

 _Don’t worry_. Yeah, right. That’s all Dean’s capable of. He tries to think of this like a hunt, picture Seth and James as two separate marks, come up with a plan. But all he’s got is that he would very much like to put a bullet in Seth’s skull and save James... Castiel. Save Castiel.

And that’s an uncomfortable thought all in itself. Saving things, hunting people. The family business turned on its head. His father would be so proud.

He wonders what Sam will think, when Dean’s finally forced to admit that maybe James isn’t so human after all. That maybe the man they’re rushing to save isn’t a man but a stolen body, taken by an otherworldly creature so it could walk the Earth unencumbered, leaving a broken family in its wake. What would Claire think if she knew about all this, if she knew that Dean didn’t really care either way, James or Castiel — they’re just names, names for someone he has a deep-seated urge to protect.

Seth’s playing a game, that’s clear — why else would he keep calling Dean about James/Castiel, dangling his fate in front of Dean’s face? But that psycho was right on the money about one thing — the man in that chair is important to Dean, and Dean doesn’t even fully understand why.

He closes his eyes and thinks, _hang on, man, hang on._

///

They’re able to drive right up to the farmhouse at The Bend. There’s no one there. The cars are all gone, no sign of people anywhere — not at the one-pump gas station, not at the bunkhouse.

Dean sees Sam and Eileen exchange a significant look, but he doesn’t stop to figure out what it might mean. As soon as the Volvo stops rolling he’s out the door, ignoring Sam’s protest of “Dean! Wait!” He charges up the steps and into the front room of the farmhouse, gun drawn.

Nothing. The rickety table’s still there, the old wooden chairs; but the guns are all gone, there’s no one standing guard. Dean scans the room quickly and efficiently before heading down the first floor hallway, eyes on the last door, dread pooling in his stomach. He should take this slower, wait on backup, check the other rooms for occupants, but, just like the first time he met James, his feet won’t stop moving. He’s drawn forward by an invisible chain wrapped around his harshly beating heart.

When Dean reaches the door he practically knocks it down, so forceful is his entry. As soon as his eyes adjust to the darkness of the room he can see that it stands empty. Dean pulls on the light cord hanging from ceiling fan, illuminating the room in an instant. Even the chair’s gone. He looks down at the floor with trepidation.

It’s still covered in blood, splattered in waves of tiny, dark red dots emanating from a large, dried puddle in the center of the room.

Dean rubs the back of his hand over his mouth, heart pounding double time, mind stuck on a loop of _too late, too late, too late._

And then —

There’s a soft, gurgling sound, like someone trying to breathe underwater. Dean spins in a circle, looking for the source. His eyes land on a small, thin door, tucked into the corner of the room. He was so frantic when he burst in that it escaped his notice.

Dean adjusts his grip on the gun, approaching the door cautiously. When he reaches out for the knob he’s sure to yank it open fast, immediately putting both hands on the gun and pointing into the face of...

_Cas._

Dean drops to the floor next to James... Castiel, setting the gun down and timidly reaching his hands up to cup the other man’s face. Castiel groans, and Dean can see his eyes rolling behind his pale lids, but he doesn’t open them.

He thought angels had supernatural healing abilities. Dean once shot Lucifer in the head only to watch him rise again seconds later. Castiel, though, is covered in blood and clearly not healing. The helmet is gone, thank god, but Dean can see the miniscule marks left from its spikes along his hairline, little tracks of dried blood running from the puncture wounds and down his face. Dean can’t see his chest and feet in the darkness of the closet, but he’s sure they look just as bad.

 _This is no angel_ , Dean thinks, though that does nothing to explain Seth’s certainty on the matter or the fact that Castiel or James or whoever he is, is still alive at all.

“It’s me, it’s — It’s Dean, hey, hey... I’m here to help you, okay, Cas?” Dean doesn’t know why that nickname, the bastardization of an angelic title, comes to him so much easier than the name James. “It’s gonna hurt when I pick you up, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.”

Castiel doesn’t respond in words, only groans again as Dean places one hand under his bent knees and one behind his back, lifting as gently as possible. He’s thin, likely due to malnutrition, so the weight isn’t too much for Dean to bear, but he still wobbles as he steps back into the light of the room with his burden, taken aback by how much worse Castiel looks in person.

There’s just so much blood, dripping down his face, covering Castiel’s mangled chest. Dean thought he saw sigils in the carvings on the video, but now it just looks like pulp. Dean looks down and sees with horror that no, he wasn’t imaging things — Seth and his sick sycophants did indeed flay the tops of Castiel’s feet, some of the strips of skin still dangling loosely.

It’s a vivid reminder of Hell, of the kinds of things Dean did to other souls while he was there, or at least the first course of action — the flaying, the carving, the sick joy taken in torture, and Dean’s stomach twists with disgust and guilt as Castiel, completely unconsciously, turns his head into Dean’s shoulder and shudders then sighs, almost like he’s relieved.

 _I don’t deserve that_ , Dean thinks frantically. _Don’t do that, I don’t deserve that._

Now Dean wants to throw up, but he can’t, he has to get out of here, has to take Castiel with him, has to find Sam...

As if summoned, he hears Sam yell, “Dean!” Dean walks to the door as quickly as possible, clutching Castiel to his chest. He picks up the pace down the hall, lightly jogging, fully aware that he’s jostling Castiel when he moves too fast — he’s shuddering now, and making hurt little whimpering noises that it kills Dean to hear — but there’s no other choice.

Sam opens the front door just in time for Dean to pass quickly through it, almost running into Eileen, who jumps back with a gasp.

“Oh my god,” Sam says, and Dean can see Eileen signing something but he ignores them, headed for the car, wishing again that they had the Impala because the Impala means _safety_ and _home_ and there’s nothing they could use more right now.

Sam rushes ahead to open up the back door, and Dean gives him a grateful nod before carefully depositing Cas in the backseat. Cas groans again as Dean sets him down, and Dean whispers, “Hey, hey, you’re okay, we’re gonna get you outta here,” then pulls out of the car to look at Sam, eyes glassy and wide.

“Dean,” Sam says, urgently gesturing down the road. “We have company.”

They both turn toward the long road that leads into The Bend from the highway. Sure enough, headlights are just on the horizon.

“Let’s go,” Dean says, and they both move quickly to the car. Eileen’s already in the driver’s seat with the engine started, and Sam takes the seat next to her. Dean runs around to the other side, opening the back door and gently lifting Castiel’s head to place in his lap.

As Eileen takes off down the road, headed north and away from the headlights, deeper into the countryside, Castiel again turns his head so his nose is pressing into Dean’s stomach. Dean just looks at him, confused and aching and worried, before placing his hand gently on the top of Cas’s scalp and softly combing his fingers through his hair.

 

 

 


	10. Cas

Sam theorizes that the remaining hunters at The Bend cleared out when they got wind of the cops coming, leaving James alone to die. If the cops came all the way out to the farmhouse they clearly didn’t stick around for long, probably thinking the call was just a prank.

Sam and Eileen searched the bunkhouse and the outbuildings, finding no trace of anyone. He’s not sure if that was Seth and his crew returning as they rushed James to the car, but he’s glad they didn’t stick around to find out.

Following a brief argument over whether or not they could safely take James to a hospital with such blatantly gruesome, non-accidental wounds (“Yes,” Sam said, “we take him and we leave him in the ER.” “No,” Dean insisted, much more forcefully, “I’m not leaving him again.”), they’re headed north, further into Nebraska to the home of a doctor Eileen knows.

“He’ll help us,” Eileen said. “He works on hunters during his off hours. He patched me up more than once.”

Sam hasn’t mentioned it, but he’s also fairly certain they can’t go back to the bunker, either — at least not yet. Seth may not know exactly where it is, but he knows it exists and that alone makes it unsafe. He only hopes this doctor friend of Eileen’s will be willing to take in four people, one of whom looks startlingly like raw hamburger meat.

He’s never seen anything like it, the magnitude of the wounds Seth inflicted on James, except maybe in Hell. Sam keeps his eyes straight ahead, not even wanting to look at the body Dean’s clutching in his arms. He wants to ask Dean why the hell this happened, what James could have possibly done to trigger Seth’s unrelenting, homicidal hatred, but he knows there likely is no answer. Seth seemed even more crazed and out-of-it than usual when they saw him at The Bend. After the incident with the angels, he probably just finally snapped.

God, Sam hates to think that violence like this needed no reason, no justification. Seth felt like hurting someone, so he did, and now that hurt has spread in a ripple effect — hitting James, then Dean, now Sam and Eileen.

Careful to avoid looking directly at James’ battered face, Sam checks on Dean in the rearview mirror. His brother still clings to James, looking down at him almost tenderly. Sam’s never seen Dean look at anyone like that. It worries him, this change in Dean, this affection that sprang up overnight for a man they should dislike just on principle.

But regardless of what he did to Claire, James didn’t deserve this — Sam knows that much. So he gets Eileen’s attention, asks, “ _Can we go any faster?”_ And she presses her foot down on the gas pedal, carrying them to a place where Sam hopes they’ll all be safe.

///

They pull up to an old, country house in the middle of a cornfield at about 3 a.m. Dean’s wide awake, slowly easing Castiel’s head off his lap and hurrying to open the door.

Eileen’s ahead of the brothers again, leaping up the front porch steps two at a time and banging on the door. Sam comes around to the back of the car to help Dean lift Castiel out, though Dean insists on carrying him to the front door.

Castiel remains still, no longer even moaning in pain, even when being jostled into Dean’s arms for the second time in one night. He’s a dead weight in Dean’s arms as they hurry to the door, and if Dean couldn’t see his chest rising and falling, couldn’t feel Castiel’s breath steadily puffing along his collarbone, he’d probably be panicking right about now.

 _How would a broken angel die,_ Dean can’t help but wonder, thinking yet again of how human Castiel seems. _Would he explode into light like the others?_

It’s not a train of thought he wants to be on for long. Dean focuses instead on the door in front of him, straining to hear any noise coming from the other side. There’s the sound of footsteps inside the house, and the porch light turns on above their heads.

Then Dean hears the distinctive sound of shotgun being pumped.

“Who’s there?” a suspicious voice demands. “And do you have any idea the hour of night?”

Sam quickly taps Eileen on the shoulder to get her attention, signing out what the man says.

“Andrew!” Eileen says. “It’s Eileen Leahy! We have an emergency!”

There’s a beat of silence, then the sound of a deadbolt sliding. The door swings open to reveal a short, stout man with wild, dark auburn hair sticking up haphazardly in every direction. He looks first at Eileen, then sees Sam and Dean and Castiel.

“Good God,” Andrew says, eyes widening as she takes in the sight of Castiel, limp and bloody in Dean’s arms. “Get in, get in.”

They rush through the door and immediately Andrew places a hand on Dean’s elbow, guiding him off into a short side hallway and then an empty bedroom. He gingerly lays Castiel down on the bed, and Andrew almost pushes him out of the way as he leans over his new patient.

“What happened to him?” he asks, and Dean hears Sam and Eileen coming through the door behind him. Andrew pries open one of Castiel’s eyelids, seemingly satisfied when he blinks suddenly to get away from the light. “What happened to you?” he asks, far more gently, but Cas doesn’t respond.

“He was tortured,” Dean says, and Andrew whirls around to look at him, startled. “By a psychotic hunter.”

Andrew blinks, as if processing this information, then turns back to Castiel and says, “Tell me everything you know about what was done to him.”

Andrew runs his hands gently over Castiel’s arms and legs, checking for breaks, while Dean says, “I’m not sure, I — when I got to him it looked like they’d... They carved sigils into his chest, flayed his feet and....”

Andrew smooths Castiel’s hair back from his forehead, revealing the tiny wounds along his scalp.

“What are these punctures? Do you know?”

“I —” Dean pauses. Sam and Eileen are still in the room, but they’re going to find out soon enough, anyway. “I’m not sure what the thing was... But... I’ve seen something like it used before. It’s a helmet, with —” He shudders. “—with protruding spikes that you drill into the skull of an angel to get to their programming.”

Andrew stops touching Castiel, pulling his hands back as if burned. Dean feels Sam and Eileen’s eyes on him, but he doesn’t take his own eyes off of Castiel.

“An angel?” Andrew asks, turning around slowly to look at Dean. “Is this an angel?”

“I don’t know,” Dean answers honestly. “Maybe.”

“Dean,” Sam says, and then his brother is right next to him, hovering at his shoulder. “What the hell?”

Dean looks at Sam, sees the fear and confusion in his brother’s eyes. Angels are frightening — they’re terrifying, absolute. They came to Earth and swept through innocent lives like a flood, destroying everything in their path, on a mission to wreck the world their father left them to protect. They killed the Winchesters’ half brother, they transported Dean to a hellish future to try to force him to say yes to being a vessel, they smote whole towns. Lucifer took Sam, and Dean’s never forgotten what that felt like, to see his brother falling into the Pit with an archangel inside him.

But Cas is different. Dean just _knows_ he is.

“Sam,” he says, “I need you to trust me that he’s a good person, that he needs our help...”

“Dean,” Sam whispers, urgent. “He’s not a person! And he could wake up and recover and kill us all without a thought. You _know_ what they’re capable of.”

“Look at him, Sam!” Dean gestures widely toward the bed. “Have you ever seen an angel unable to heal itself?”

“Maybe it’s because of those sigils, but once he —”

“No.” Dean shakes his head. “No, you didn’t see him up against the other angels. They knew him, and they hated him.” Suddenly Dean recalls what one of the angels said, _I’m so sick of the Castiel and the Winchesters show._ “And Sam, Sammy I think… I know we knew him once, too.”

Sam heaves a giant sigh, shaking his head. “That isn’t possible, Dean. We’d remember —”

“He’s Cas,” Dean insists, though he doesn’t know what he’s insisting upon, really, just that the name fits. It feels right, the way his mouth moves to form the word, the way it easily slides off his tongue. _Cas._

Eileen, who’s moved next to Andrew by the bed to watch the conversation, says suddenly, “Wait, _this_ is Cas?”

“Who’s Cas?” Andrew asks, but he’s ignored as Sam and Dean continue to stare each other down.

Finally Sam says slowly, “Cas. The Cas you talked about after your concussion, the one you said we left.”

Dean nods hurriedly. “Yes! Seth called him Castiel. But I knew before then, and no, Sam, no I don’t know how — I just did.” Sam gives him the bitchiest face, but Dean presses on. “And when we met him... you should have seen the look on his face when I asked if he was James Novak. Sam, you have to trust me. Just, please let’s help him, then you can ask any questions you want. But we can’t just leave him like this!”

Sam sighs again and looks at Dean, considering, then over to Castiel on the bed, then back to Dean.

“Fine,” he says. “Because you’re right, angel or not, we can’t leave him like this. But Dean, as soon as he starts healing we light a ring of holy fire and we demand answers. We find out who he really is and why you’re so convinced we should know him.”

Dean hates the idea of trapping Castiel in holy fire — something about it just seems unreasonably cruel — but he nods. They’ll do this Sam’s way if it gets Cas immediate help.

Sam turns to Eileen, signs something too fast for Dean to catch, and she says back, “Yeah, I agree.”

Then Sam turns to Andrew.

“Can you treat him?” he asks.

Andrew throws his hands up in the air.

“Why not?” he says. “Might as well treat an angel, lord knows I’ve treated just about everything else...”

Andrew turns back to the bed, making a shooing motion behind his back. Sam and Eileen leave the room, pulling a reluctant Dean behind them. As Sam yanks him out the door, Dean gets one last look at Cas’s bloody face and shudders, thinking _at least you’re with your family now_.


	11. Safe

Dean sits vigil over Cas after everyone else goes to bed. He’s exhausted — it’s probably been at least 24 hours since the last time he slept — but that’s what coffee is for. He downs his fourth cup, hands slightly shaking, and leans over toward the bed.

Cas, because that’s all Dean can call him now, sleeps like the dead. Dean’s constantly hovering his hand just under his nostrils to make sure Cas is still breathing. His chest, forehead and feet are wrapped in layer upon layer of gauze, hiding the gashes and loose strips of skin, and there’s a bandage on his wrist where Andrew attached an IV for a blood transfusion earlier. What the doctor (it’s Dr. Green, apparently, but he insists they stick with Andrew) is doing with type O blood bags in his house Dean can’t guess, but he’s grateful for them nonetheless.

He looks over Cas for the hundredth time, checking to make sure he doesn’t bleed through the gauze or wake up and pull out the IV that’s now providing a saline drip of pain meds. Cas continues to sleep silently — no snoring, no tossing or turning. Dean worries that he might be brain damaged from the helmet, though Andrew said he woke up twice and blearily interacted with him while he finished his bandages. Dean wishes he were in the room, then, to make sure Cas knew with certainty that he’s safe. No one will hurt him here. Dean won’t allow it.

 _You need to be more objective_ , a voice that sounds like Sam reminds him. _Angels are the enemy. If he’s an angel, he’s an enemy._

“Not Cas,” Dean says aloud, with conviction. “Cas is different.”

He should worry more about this — how certain he is about things he doesn’t know for a fact, like this belief that Cas is one of the good guys — but right now Dean feels justified. Like maybe he wasn’t losing touch with reality during all those years he spent talking to air, like maybe this insane protective streak he feels for Cas didn’t come out of nowhere. Like maybe there’s been a hole in his life and he only now found what goes in it, and it’s Cas. Obviously.

Dean sighs.

“It’s gonna be harder to convince Sam, buddy,” he whispers to Cas, who twitches slightly but doesn’t wake. “He thinks you’re bad news. You gotta understand, we’ve dealt with angels more than just about any hunters, and those experiences...” Dean shivers. “Let’s just say angels are dicks. No offense.”

Dean pauses, looks at Cas’s face.

“I think you’re probably not a dick. Not all the time, anyway. I wonder... I wonder what happened to you. I wonder why you’re alone, when you should be with us.” Just saying that gives Dean even greater confidence. He’s right, Cas should be with him and Sam. But mostly him. “I wonder if you’re my ghost. That what Sam calls it, sometimes. The person I talk to when no one else is around. You know, this —” Dean gestures between them. “— feels sort of like that. Talking to someone who can’t talk back. But it also feels right, like I wanted to talk to you all along. Do you know what I mean?”

Silence.

“Right,” Dean says, looking down at his hands. “You’re currently sleeping on a shit ton of meds, I get it. You deserve some rest, that’s for sure. Those bags under your eyes, man... I’m glad you’re getting some sleep. But when you wake up, I hope we can talk for real.” He clasps his hands together, looking back up at Cas. “I hope you can explain what’s been happening to me…” He trails off in a bitter laugh. “‘Cause I’ve been slowly losing it for years, man. And I want to know what happened to you, too. It’d be nice to have some clarity for once.”

Dean leans back in the chair he pulled next to the bed, satisfied now that he can see the slight rise and fall of Cas’s chest. He closes his eyes, thinking _just a few minutes of rest_.

He slips into the waiting arms of sleep.

///

Dean wakes up several hours later, groggily rubbing at his eyes to clear away the sleep gunk. His mouth, after several cups of coffee and no toothpaste, tastes like the charred mess at the bottom of the bunker’s old coffee pot. He licks his gritty teeth and sighs, wondering if Andrew has extra toiletries or if that old toothbrush is still in his go-bag, and... Oh, shit — he forgot about Baby, _how could you forget about Baby?!_

Dean jolts up in the chair, ready to run out of the room and ask Sam when they’re going back for his car, only to be shocked into sitting back down again at the sight of Cas’s watery blue eyes staring straight at him.

“Castiel?” he asks uncertainly after several moments of tense silence, because it’s one thing to talk candidly to someone while they sleep and another thing entirely to have them wake up and stare back at you.

Cas blinks, startled.

“Oh,” he says quietly, resigned. “You know.” He swallows and turns away. Dean watches, fascinated and anxious, as Cas screws his eyes tightly shut. “Well, let’s get it over with.”

Now Dean’s just confused.

“Get what over with?” he asks. Cas opens his eyes and stares at the ceiling like he didn’t even hear Dean speak.

“Just don’t —” Cas takes a shuddery breath, like he’s trying not to cry. “Don’t torture me anymore, Dean, please, I can’t... I can’t take that from you, not from you, just kill me and get it over with...”

“Christ, Cas,” Dean says, alarmed, but Cas keeps babbling, more frantic and less coherent.

“I knew they’d send you, I knew you’d be the last one, it had to be you who does it, please don’t hurt me anymore, Dean, please not you, don’t —”

Dean cuts him off by reaching over to grab his hand, realizing at the last second that hey, that’s probably too abrupt a move from the guy Cas expects to kill him. Sure enough, Cas clams up, looking down at their joined hands in horror. Slowly Dean lets go, then brings both his hands up to show he’s unarmed and not intending to make any more sudden moves. Cas stares at him, still shaking.

“Okay,” Dean says, hands still raised. “Okay, let’s try this again. You’re not at The Bend anymore. Look.” He jerks his head to the side, indicating the rest of the room. Cas’s eyes briefly dart away from his, confused. “You’re at the home of a friend of ours, Dr. Andrew Green. Look down, he patched you up.” Cas slowly tips his chin to his chest, taking in the numerous bandages sticking out from under the covers. “You can’t see your feet under the blanket, but he treated them and your head, too.”

Still breathing hard and heavy from his outburst and general panic, Cas turns to Dean.

“I — I don’t understand.”

“You’re safe,” Dean says slowly. “We’re gonna take care of you, make sure Seth and his goons can’t find you. You’re with me and my brother and his wife. We came to get you.”

Cas looks at Dean dazedly, scrunching his nose in confusion. It would be adorable if he didn’t still seem so upset.

“Wh— Why are you doing this? What do you want from me?”

“Nothing,” Dean promises. “We just want to help.”

Cas turns away from him, staring up at nothing again. Dean waits patiently for him to gather himself.

“What do you remem—” Cas starts to say to the ceiling, then stops. “What do you know about me besides my name?”

Dean finally lowers his hands, bringing them to his lap. He looks at the door anxiously, but there’s no sounds coming from outside. Everyone else must still be asleep. That’s good. No Sam means no holy fire, not yet. Dean has a feeling Cas isn’t calm or coherent enough to handle being trapped in ring of flames that can kill him.

“I know you’re an angel,” Dean says, and Cas laughs suddenly, bitterly. He doesn’t say anything, though, so Dean hesitantly continues, “Seth called you a seraph. And those other angels, they lumped us in together, acted like you knew me. I couldn’t figure out what they were talking about, then. I still don’t get it, actually... I was hoping you might know what’s going on here.” Dean laughs a little nervously and rubs a hand on the back of his neck. “When you’re feeling better, of course. You don’t have to tell me everything right now.”

For some reason he’s suddenly nervous, afraid to hear what Cas has to say. What if he misjudged Cas? What if he knew Dean before but they hated each other? What if he never knew Dean at all, and this bond Dean feels with him is one-sided, all in Dean’s head just like everything else?

Cas rolls his head toward Dean, silent and evaluating. His eyes are red and puffy, and Dean feels the strangest urge to lean forward, to press kisses to those eyelids. _God, get a grip, Winchester_ , he thinks. _What the fuck is wrong with you?_

“I’d like to sleep,” Cas says. “I’m hurting pretty much everywhere.”

“Right, right,” Dean says hurriedly, simultaneously relieved and disappointed in equal measure that the conversation is ending. “Let me go get Andrew, ask if he can up your meds. You might want to pretend to be asleep, though, so he doesn’t ask you a bunch of questions.” _So he doesn’t wake Sam up and let him trap you in holy fire_.

Cas just lolls his head back to the center of the pillow and closes his eyes. Dean bites his tongue to stop from saying anything else. Cas clearly isn’t up for a chat right now, and why would he be? He’s been tortured for a week straight, just woke up in a strange place delirious and raving, convinced that Seth sent Dean to hurt him.

Dean quietly leaves the room, closing the door slowly to stop it from creaking. The door to the other guest room is closed, Sam snoring loudly on the other side. Dean smiles to himself, fondly recalling all the times he threw pillows at Sam’s face in the middle of the night to get him to shut up. The he sighs, remembering his brother’s ultimatum. He just hopes that when Cas does wake up feeling more alert Dean can convince Sam extreme measures aren’t necessary. He’s not sure what it would do to Cas’s physical and mental health to feel threatened again so soon, but he’s sure no good will come of it.

The master bedroom is on the other side of the house, so Dean walks through the living room and past the kitchen, reminding himself to clean his coffee mug out later. He knocks on the bedroom door as softly as he can manage, hoping to still wake Andrew up.

“Andrew?” he asks quietly. “Andrew?”

No answer, so he knocks a little bit louder.

“Dr. Green?”

Dean shuffles uncomfortably, debating giving up, but then he thinks of how tired and frail Cas looks, so he pounds harder on the door.

“Andrew!” He shouts, leaning his forehead against the door. “We could use your help out here.”

Nothing. Dean lets out a growl of frustration, the decides _fuck it_ and pushes the door open.

The master bedroom is dark, the curtains on the windows drawn. Dean makes out the big bed against the far wall, a cluttered dresser, some clothes in a hamper next to the door. A digital alarm clock on the nightstand next to the bed reads 6:43. That’s later than Dean expected it to be.

Movement in the darkest corner of the room catches his eye.

“Andrew?” he says. “Sorry to barge in, but Cas needs —”

Andrew steps out of the darkness, moving into the thin beam of light cast by the open door. He’s still wearing his pajamas — flannel pants and a ratty University of Nebraska sweater. He narrows his eyes at Dean, then suddenly he smiles, an odd grin that doesn’t seem to fit quite right on his face.

“Andrew?” Dean asks again, uneasily. “Is everything okay?”

“Oh,” Andrew says, and his voice is breathy, higher than Dean remembers from their few interactions last night. “I was so hoping it was the three of you!”

Then his eyes slide to black.


	12. Don't Touch

“Sam!” Dean shouts, stumbling backwards and out of the room, scrambling toward his bag, which holds — well, a gun and the demon knife. Most of his gear is at the bunker or in the trunk of the Impala. “Sammy!”

“Oh, come on now,” the demon purrs from behind him. “Why don’t you and I have a little fun first, before you call out the whole guard?”

Dean skids across the kitchen tile into the living room, nearly falling in his rush to open his bag. Before he can draw out the knife he’s flung across the room, hitting the wall of windows that look out onto the backyard with a _crack_. Dean gasps, feeling a spike of pain along his ribs. _Fuck, why do they always have to go with the wall slam?_

The demon advances on him, smirking. It holds out one of Andrew’s hands and makes a twisting motion. Dean gasps as an invisible vice twists around his trachea.

Then there’s a shout from the direction of the guest bedrooms, and Dean and the demon turn to see Eileen holding up a shotgun. She fires, blasting the demon with a load of rock salt to the gut. The demon cries out in pain, stumbling backwards, and his hold on Dean releases. Dean falls ungracefully to the ground, moaning as the shock of the landing jars his fractured rib.

“Dean!” That’s Sam running for him, but Dean waves him away toward his bag.

“Knife,” he grits out through clenched teeth.

Understanding dawns in Sam’s eyes and he changes course, ducking low to the ground so Eileen can fire over his head, hitting the still fumbling demon with another round of salt.

Eileen pumps the shotgun to fire again, but Dean can tell by the sound it’s out of rounds. The demon stands, shakily smiling, then flicks both of Andrew’s wrists, this time sending Eileen and Sam flying backwards to land in a crumpled heap on the ground.

“Sam!” Dean calls on instinct, wincing at the pain shouting causes.

“Relax,” the demon says, shaking to brush off clinging salt molecules. Sam and Eileen both groan, trying to untangle themselves from each other. “See, they’re fine.”

It leans down over Dean’s bag, carefully withdrawing the demon-killing knife and turning it over, looking at the markings etched into the blade. The demon smiles.

“You know, I’ve heard all about this blade,” it says, twisting Andrew’s voice into something higher, unnatural. It points the knife at the Winchesters, still sprawled on the ground. “I’ve heard about all of you, actually. Sam and Dean, the infamous Winchester brothers, who’ve killed so many of my kind. And you must be Eileen, the banshee hunter.”

Eileen glares at the demon. “Let Andrew go,” she says.

“Mmmm, didn’t quite catch that,” the demon sing-songs. “Anyway, I’m not here for any of you. Where’s your angel, the one leaking grace all over the place? He hasn’t got much left, I’m afraid, but —” Its eyes flash black again. “I could still smell it from miles away.”

At that it sniffs, taking in an exaggerated breath. It points toward the guest bedrooms.

“Right over there, yes?”

It starts to walk toward the closed door Cas is resting behind, and Dean quickly stands, shocked into stillness for a second by the pressure in his side. _Yup, rib definitely fractured._ He lurches toward the demon, and it rolls Andrew’s eyes.

“Don’t make me come at you with this,” it says, shaking the blade in Dean’s direction. “You’re in no shape to make any sudden moves.”

Dean contorts his face into a glare that’s probably more of a pained grimace. He sees Sam and Eileen slowly move to stand out of the corner of his eye.

“Oh, guys, come on now,” the demon pleads mockingly. “Don’t make me throw you into the walls again.” When the three of them start to move toward it, circling around the demon, it brings its arms forwards, hands intertwined, and cracks its knuckles loudly. “Well, if that’s how it’s gonna be...”

“Don’t touch them,” a low voice says from the hall.

All four of them turn their heads to see Cas standing in the doorway on heavily bandaged feet, leaning against the wall. He’s only wearing too-big sweatpants, so the entirety of his gauze-covered chest is on display. It’s not exactly a fear-inducing sight.

“Ahhh,” the demon says, smirk widening. “It truly is Castiel! This day just gets better and better! You know, we all — and I mean Hell, Heaven, Purgatory, everybody — thought Lucifer killed you. But then about a month or so ago these rumors started about this _grace_ that’s been sensed all over the place, weaving its way throughout the countryside, looking for a home. Then a week ago two angels died outside of a hunter’s compound right here in this very state, and rumor has it they were looking for that very same grace. Looking for you.”

The demon looks Cas up and down appraisingly, and Dean feels rage simmering low in his gut.

“They call you angel killer, you know. Angel killer, traitor, deserter, the new Lucifer...” It ticks the terrible monikers off on its fingers, counting them out. Then the demon smiles maliciously, eyes sliding over to Dean. “They call you _human fucker._ ”

Dean looks at Cas in confusion, but Cas is staring at the ground, face red and contorted in pain and shame.

“But you don’t look like much of anything right now,” the demon says, and it rushes at Cas.

Eileen’s the closest, but when she tries to leap at the demon it sends her tumbling hard to the ground, tripping up Sam right behind her. The demon brings his hand down, as if to force them into the ground, and both Sam and Eileen cry out. Dean’s too far away, but he runs for the demon anyway, leaping across the coffee table with a muffled groan of pain.

He’s too late. The demon grabs a hold of Cas and pins him to the wall by his throat, his feet dangling. Dean desperately charges it, but the demon turns and, still holding Cas, kicks out, hitting Dean square in his injured rib. Dean doubles over, gasping.

“You’re coming with me, angel,” the demon says, smacking Cas’s head back into the wall and pointing the end of the demon-killing knife at his throat. “I know a lot of things that will pay good money for your grace — and your head.”

Dean looks up from his spot on the floor, breathing heavily. He’s shocked to see that Cas is almost _smiling_ , a small little upturn of one side of his mouth. Then Cas kicks out, connecting with the demon’s (Andrew’s) balls, and it drops him suddenly. Fast, almost too fast for Dean to see, Cas reaches forward, grabs the hand the demon’s using to grip the demon-killing knife, and jabs the knife straight into its throat.

The demon takes a stutter-step forward, eyes wide, then drops to its knees, sparks issuing from the stab wound. It falls to the floor.

For several long seconds all Dean can do is stare at the body, _Andrew’s body_ , in shock. Then he’s vaguely aware of Cas saying, “Oh, oh no, oh no” and dropping down next to the lifeless form, rolling Andrew over, pulling the blade out of his throat.

Dean hears Eileen say, “Oh god” from somewhere behind him, but he can’t take his eyes off Cas, trying to stem the massive blood flow that’s covering his hands, frantically whispering in Enochian. He holds one hand hovering slightly over the fatal wound like he’s trying to force it to stitch together, force the hole in the punctured vein to grow back over, force blood to beat through this dead body again.

It’s a lost cause.

“Cas,” Dean says softly as Cas continues to mutter incoherently. “Cas, you can’t —” He’s pretty sure Cas isn’t anywhere close enough to full capacity to even attempt a basic healing, let alone a complete resurrection. “He’s dead, Cas. He’s dead, you can’t save him.”

Dean scoots forward on his knees, every movement jarring his rib, but he has to touch Cas. He reaches out, carefully placing a hand over Cas’s, pulling him away, getting his own hand soaked in Andrew’s blood.

Cas stares at Andrew’s crumpled body, then looks down at his own hands, dripping dark red.

“He tried to save me,” Cas whispers helplessly. “And I killed him, I killed him, I...”

“Cas,” Dean says again, louder this time. “The demon would have killed you, you had no choice —”

“I should have let it kill me!” Cas all but snarls with such force that Dean leans away from him, stunned.

The room falls into silence. Cas sits next to Andrew, chest heaving, eyes shut tight, and Dean looks to Sam and Eileen for help but they seem just as stunned as he is. Then Cas suddenly bends over, gasping, tears leaking out of the corner of his eyes.

“Cas?” Dean asks, worried but not sure if he should move closer. Cas puts his head between his knees.

“My feet, my —”

Dean realizes the adrenaline that propelled Cas out of the bedroom, that helped him fight the demon, must be wearing off. Now the pain’s back, leaving him curled in on himself in a desperate attempt to ease the suffering. Dean’s hurting, too, but it’s not like he’s never fractured a rib before. He slides over to Cas, ready to lift him and take him back to the room, when Cas suddenly swats his hand away.

“Don’t touch me,” he says, scrambling backwards, away from Dean, gasping as the rapid movement pulls at his wounds. It stings, but just because Cas wants to be stubborn doesn’t mean Dean has to indulge him.

“You can’t walk on your feet when they’re torn up like that, let me help you.”

Dean gets up on his knees and reaches out for Cas again, and again Cas dodges his hands, even though it clearly causes him more pain. Dean just stares at the empty space between them, unable to process what just happened.

“Not you,” Cas says, and Dean finally meets his eyes. They’re wet. “Not you, don’t touch me.”

“Cas —”

“DON’T CALL ME THAT!” Cas yells, and this time Dean is the one to move away, falling back on his hands like Cas slapped him. Cas shakes, looking between Andrew’s body and Dean, eyes wild. “You don’t get to call me that anymore! You don’t get to pretend like you care about me! Don’t touch me! Don’t —”

He breaks off in a heaving sob, and Eileen rushes over to him, limping slightly from her own injuries.

“Okay Castiel, let’s try to calm to down,” she says soothingly, bending down to gently take his face in her hands, and Dean wonders how much of Cas’s speech she caught in the darkness of the room. He looks at Sam and sees his brother staring back at him, gaping and bewildered. “Sam!” Eileen calls, and Sam turns to her. “Can you carry Cas back to his room?”

“No,” Cas says fiercely, before Sam even has a chance to answer. “Not Sam. I can walk.”

He proves himself wrong the second he tries to stand on his mutilated feet, falling immediately back down. On pure instinct Dean moves forward to catch him, realizing at the last second that _no, he said no, he said don’t touch him_. He draws back his hands, and Eileen is the one who steps in. She pushes herself under Cas’s arm, supporting him so he can keep most of his weight on her.

“Can you lean on me till we get to the bed?” she asks quietly, and Cas doesn’t respond, suddenly sagging into Eileen, wrung out and done. “Okay, just hang on.”

They walk off in an awkward limp, leaving Dean and Sam sitting in stunned silence in the wrecked living room. Dean stares at the doorway Eileen and Cas disappeared into, numbness settling into his chest.

Cas hates him.


	13. Hurt

Cas refuses to let anyone but Eileen in the room with him, leaving Sam to dig Andrew’s grave and Dean to salt and burn the body before Sam covers it in dirt. While the brothers bleach the blood stains from the hardwood floor Eileen changes Cas’s bandages. While they try to put the living room back in order Eileen helps Cas wash himself with a wet sponge. While they cover the house in every sigil and ward they can think of, Eileen measures out Cas’s medication and makes sure he takes it.

When Cas screams in the night, Sam wakes Eileen and she goes to the bedroom to tend to him, and Dean lies on the couch and stares at the ceiling, as defeated as he’s ever been.

If Eileen’s upset that Cas killed her friend she doesn’t show it, tending to him for days without complaint. Dean even hears her telling Cas stories about faeries from behind the partially open guest room door, but he doesn’t dare get closer.

Cas hates him.

Cas hates him, and he apparently hates Sam, too. The revelation sobers both of the Winchesters. Sam forgets all about the holy fire scheme, avoiding the second guest bedroom like the plague, but sometimes Dean catches him looking at the closed door, a pained furrow between his brows. Dean loses the anchor he had on reality, often startling himself into awareness in the middle of some activity to find he’s been spaced out for minutes, whispering to the walls again.

The ghost of Andrew can’t come back to haunt them, but the house is haunted nonetheless — haunted by the words Cas screamed at Dean the night the demon came.

_You don’t get to call me that anymore..._

Dean goes to bed every night and waits for Cas’s nightmares to begin, waits for his legs to start itching to run to him, waits to hear Sam’s gruff, sleep-heavy voice as he rouses his wife, waits for the quiet footsteps of Eileen, waits for the silence that follows, occasionally broken by soft voices in the other room.

It should be him in there with Cas. Dean knows it in his bones. It should always be him with Cas.

A small voice in Dean’s head whispers, _then why’d you let him go?_

 /// 

On the fourth day after the demon attack, Eileen comes to breakfast with bags under her eyes, leaning her head against her hand at the table. Sam serves her a bowl of cereal without comment.

It’s strange and highly uncomfortable to stay in a dead man’s home, but they’ve got nowhere else to go that’s any safer from Seth. The bunker could be compromised, and Cas is still too hurt to move, anyway. They’re stuck. Dean looks down at the rooster-covered tablecloth Andrew must have picked out and feels sick to his stomach. He pushes his bowl of cereal away.

Sam and Eileen are in the middle of what looks like an argument, using only their hands to communicate. Their movements are abrupt, jerky; their faces angry. Dean tries to follow along, but he’s just not quick enough. Eileen pushes back her chair from the table and dumps her still full bowl of cereal in the sink before Dean can ask what’s wrong. The brothers watch her storm to the bedroom she and Sam are sharing, slamming the door. Sam sighs.

“Uh,” Dean says, eloquent as always, gesturing to the hall where Eileen disappeared.

“She said we’re cowards.” Dean looks at his brother quizzically. Sam’s pushing his spoon around his bowl in meaningless circles. “She said she can’t be the only one taking care of Castiel anymore because she’s exhausted from waking up all hours of the night every night, and he refuses to tell her anything about himself or how he....” Sam sighs again, rubbing a hand wearily over his eyes. “How he knows us, I guess. She said we need to just go talk to him, stop hiding.”

Dean looks at the tablecloth. The rooster closest to him is black, its feathers puffed up in a show of dominance.

“Dean?”

He blinks and turns back to Sam, who just looks tired.

“You did it again.”

“Did what again?”

Sam shakes his head.

“Dean, come on. You spaced out again, said something about it’s your fault or whatever. Jesus, man, we have to get this under control.”

Snapping back at Sam would require more effort than Dean’s currently willing to give because most of his thoughts are consumed by Cas, hiding behind that door, angry and hurt, needing someone to look after him.

 _It should be you. It was always supposed to be you_.

“Do you think we did something to him?”

It’s not what he meant to say, but Dean can’t stop the words from tumbling out, putting his new fears on display.

Sam takes his time to respond, evaluating the question before saying, “I don’t know, Dean. I mean, he’s an angel, so why should we trust him? But then, he came to fight that demon and....” Sam shrugs. “I don’t know. I don’t know why we can’t remember him, why he said the things he said — why he tried to protect us if we’re so horrible. I’ve been trying to figure it out, trying to work out where we could have possibly forgotten partnering up with an angel, but I’ve got nothing, Dean. I’ve got _nothing_.”

He says that last part quietly, with a hint of disbelief. Dean knows Sam hates having a problem he can’t solve placed in front of him, and this seems beyond both of them. The only one who knows anything is Cas, and he’s shut them out — literally.

“I think,” Dean says, saying the first thing that comes to mind, “he was more than a temporary case partner or something. I think he was our friend.”

It’s another gut feeling out of left field that normally Sam would dismiss, but this time he just says, “Yeah, I... I kind of wondered if that might have been the case. It would explain a lot. Like why he cared enough to go against angels and a demon for us, and why he finally snapped and told us to get away from him. There’s a lot of emotion there.”

Dean nods, swallowing hard. He thinks about the fear in Cas’s eyes, the horrible things he said when he first woke up to see Dean watching over him.

“He thought I was there to kill him, Sam. When he first woke up after everything that went down at Seth’s. He begged me not to torture him anymore, said he couldn’t take that from me. He —” Dean breaks off, shaking and unsure how to continue. Sam watches him, silent and sad. “He said to make it quick, that he knew they would make me be the one to do it.”

Dean looks at Sam, red-eyed.

“What did I do to him?” he asks. “He didn’t want me to touch him. Do you think I... Do you think I’ve _tortured_ him before?”

Sam reaches out and carefully places a hand over Dean’s.

“Dean,” he says, “every instinct you’ve had has been to protect him. I don’t know what’s going on here, but I don’t think... I don’t think you would have tortured him. You were done with that a decade ago, man. And he let you near him until that night with the demon. He’s hurt and he’s traumatized, so he lashed out at us.”

“Yeah, maybe,” Dean mutters.

“Am I ever wrong?” Sam smiles, not very convincingly, and Dean grunts. “Why don’t you let me take care of him today, if he’ll let me, and I’ll try to figure this out for both of us, okay?”

 _I’m supposed to take care of him,_ Dean wants to protest. _I’m supposed to take care of you. That’s my job. I should be the one putting himself out there._

But part of him is still afraid, afraid to see Cas wild-eyed and screaming at him to leave again. Dean felt such inexplicable relief when they first brought Cas here, like finally this unexplained sense of longing that had persisted within him for the last three years could be wiped away. Now it’s back, full-force, and he’s terrified he’ll never lose it because Cas will never speak to him again.

“Okay,” he tells Sam. “But don’t treat him like the enemy. He’s had enough of that, I think.”

Sam nods, clapping Dean on the back as he stands up from his chair to take their dishes to the sink. Dean watches him, that numbness settling into his chest again, taking root.

 _I’m sorry I’m a coward_. 

/// 

Sam hesitates at the door to Cas’s room, fist held hovering above it, ready to knock. He can feel Dean’s eyes on him from the living room.

 _Don’t treat him like the enemy, right_.

He tells himself that’s probably a good idea, at least for now. Cas has been tortured; he just barely escaped from that demon and killed Andrew in the process, albeit not willingly. He’s obviously met the Winchesters before, maybe they were even friends, and their time together didn’t end well. Sam doesn’t want to treat him like an enemy, not in the state he’s in, but what if they’re reading this all wrong? What if Cas is just like every other angel; what if he’s playing them, making them think they need to feel guilty and responsible for him? He sighs, takes a deep breath, and knocks.

“Come in,” comes the gruff reply.

The room is dark, the blinds drawn. Sam hesitantly closes the door behind him.

“Sam.” Cas’s voice is dry, even.

“Hey,” Sam says. Cas sits up in bed, wincing as he does. He’s bare-chested, still covered in bandages placed carefully over his torn skin. There’s another bandage wrapped around his head, covering his forehead just beneath his hairline. “Um, Eileen is sort of exhausted. She asked us to see if you need anything, and, uh...”

“Since I yelled at Dean, you’re here,” Cas says, surprisingly wry, and then he sighs. “You can come closer. I won’t bite.”

“Right.” Sam crosses the room, carefully pulling the chair next to Cas’s bed a little bit closer to the door. There’s a small desk pushed up next to the bed covered in medical supplies — ointments, bandages, emptied IV bags. “Do you know what all this is for?”

“I can change the bandages myself,” Cas says. “Except for my feet. I can’t... It hurts too much, I’ve tried...”

“No, that’s okay,” Sam scoots a little bit closer, noting how Cas eyes him warily. “I want to help.”

They sit in the dark, looking at one another. Sam can just make out Cas’s face, his scrunched brow and puzzled frown. Cas tilts his head to the side, like a puppy evaluating some strange new sight. Sam smiles, a little unsure.

“You don’t know what to think of me,” Cas says finally, “and I don’t know what to think of you.”

 _An accurate reflection_ , Sam thinks.

“I guess I just don’t understand what’s going on,” Sam says. “But I’m not here to bug you for answers, I’m just here to see if you need anything.”

Cas looks down, fiddling with the blanket tucked over his legs.

“I think I’m all right,” he says quietly. “Eileen usually helps me change the bandages after lunch. If you want to pass me those pills...” He points to a bottle at the edge of the desk. Sam grabs the pill bottle and hands it over, then hands Cas the half-empty glass of water that sat next to the pills. “Thank you.” He shakes the bottle. “These help with the headaches. And the general pain.”

Cas pops a few pills in his mouth, quickly chugging the rest of the water. Some must go down the wrong pipe because he starts to cough, his face contorting in pain.

“Whoa, easy.” Sam reaches out, intending to thump him on the back only to realize at the last second how badly that would hurt with all of Cas’s injuries. “Are you okay?”

Cas covers his mouth with a hand and nods, still hacking slightly.

“Well,” he says when he’s finished coughing, “I’ve been better.” Cas reflects for a moment. “I’ve also been worse, so...”

Sam blanches.

“Worse? When?” he asks, incredulous, then mentally kicks himself. _What a loaded question_.

There’s a long pause. Cas looks at Sam appraisingly, like he’s trying to read his thoughts. It makes Sam shift uncomfortably, makes him want to keep his eyes down to avoid that steady gaze.

Then Cas says, “I felt worse when you made me leave the bunker.”

Sam stares at him in shock. The Winchesters don’t tell just anyone about the bunker. It’s a hard-earned secret. Eileen knows about it because she lives there now. Charlie visited a few times before she died, and of course there was Kevin. They let Crowley in when he was still alive, but only on occasion, and they had to break wards to grant him entry every time. The bunker is still warded against angels, which must mean —

“Dean was right,” Sam says. “He said he thought we were... friends?”

Pursing his lips into a thin line, Cas looks away.

“Cas– Castiel. What do you mean we made you leave? Why?”

Cas looks back at him, gaze hard and unflinching when he says, “You were the one who told me to go, Sam. So you tell me.”

“I don’t remember you. I don’t remember telling you to go, I don’t know...”

Cas shakes his head, his hands clenching into fists on top of his blankets.

“I thought I could do this, but —” Cas starts, then abruptly stops. “Thank you for helping me with the pills,” he says stiffly. “You can leave now. I can change the bandages myself, later.”

Sam knows he should argue. He should ask Cas to tell him everything; he should probably light that holy fire and treat this like the interrogation of an enemy combatant. But Cas knew about the bunker. His eyes clouded over when he talked about Sam making him leave, full of some deep sadness.

 _Why would I make him leave? What did he do? What did_ I _do?_

Something tells Sam that this is his fault and not Cas’s, but he has no idea how or why.

“Did we hurt you?” Sam asks, and Cas narrows his eyes. “Physically, I mean? Is that why you didn’t want Dean to touch you?”

He feels almost sick asking that, but he has to know.

“No,” Cas says, but there’s so much left unsaid in that single symbol that Sam knows it’s not the full truth.

“We still hurt you, though.”

Sam wishes Dean were here. Dean’s excellent at reading people. He’d recognize the emotions flickering across Cas’s face when Sam says _we still hurt you_.

“Yes,” Cas says. “You still hurt me.”

Sam doesn’t know what to say, but he can tell by the way Cas shrinks back into the pillows that he wants Sam to leave. So he stands up, grabbing the empty glass.

“I’ll bring you more water,” he says quietly. “Then Dean or I can help you with your bandages after lunch. We don’t have to talk to you, not if you don’t want. But you do need help.”

Cas stares at the ceiling as he says, “I don’t care who comes. Either of you, you’re both the same.”

He says it with the clear implication that he prefers neither of the brothers, but Sam catches the way his voice wobbles. He’s lying. There’s something different about Dean.

“I can do it, if you’d prefer,” Sam says. “You don’t have to see Dean. You don’t even have to see me after Eileen gets some rest.”

“Send Dean,” Cas says suddenly. “He’s better at stitches.”

Sam blinks at this latest revelation of intimate personal knowledge, shocked. Cas closes his eyes, clearly done with any and all conversation. Sam swallows around the lump in his throat. His head hurts suddenly. He thinks of all the headaches Dean’s been getting lately, how they seem to somehow coincide with all the times his brother started talking to no one.

 _Praying,_ Sam thinks, apropos of nothing. _Dean was praying._


	14. Storm Coming

Cas is lying in bed staring blankly at the ceiling again when Dean walks in. His hands are shaking, so Dean shoves them in his jacket pocket. Everything in him says _turn around. You don’t deserve to be here._

“He asked for you,” Sam said. “He knows about the bunker, Dean. How could he know about that?”

It’s not like Dean’s got any insider knowledge here. All he knows right now are the following facts: James Novak is actually Castiel; Castiel knows Sam and Dean or at least knows of them; Castiel is likely being tracked down by Heaven, Hell and Seth’s band of hunters, which means they’re still in danger; and Castiel hates him.

He might also be connected to Dean’s bouts of disassociation, but that’s just a theory Dean has that suddenly Sam seems to share — as if the last three years of Sam thinking Dean’s lost it have been wiped away just by Cas mentioning the bunker.

“What if you were praying?” Sam asked him, standing in the living room and whispering so as to not wake Cas. “What if part of you remembers him, and you were praying to him?”

“I don’t think so,” Dean said. “I don’t pray.”

Looking at Cas now, so worn down and seemingly fragile as he lies under a pile of covers, Dean’s not so sure. He thinks maybe he could pray for Cas. Maybe it would even work. Maybe God answers prayers more for angels than he does for humans.

“Dean.” Cas’s voice breaks him from his thoughts. “You told me once that staring at people while they sleep is creepy.”

At that Dean laughs, surprising himself.

“Uh, well you’re not asleep,” he says, somewhat sheepishly. “And that’s a very specific thing for me to have to tell you.”

Cas just rolls his eyes, and the expression is so familiar that Dean’s overcome with a sense of deja vu. He walks slowly over to the bed, giving Cas time to tell him to leave should he choose to. Cas doesn’t say anything, but his eyes follow Dean closely as he makes his way across the room.

“So,” Dean says, coming to a stop a few feet away from Cas. “Sam said that you need help with stitches?”

Pushing himself up slowly, Cas lets the blanket fall from his shoulders to pool in his lap. He cringes as he leans against the headboard, then gestures to his bandaged chest.

“Andrew cleaned the cuts, and he stitched some of them.” Cas gingerly tugs at one strip of white gauze taped across the right side of his abdomen, pulling it up. “I think this one might be infected, though.”

The stitches Cas is referring to run in between two larger but more shallow-looking gashes that are scabbing over. Dean winces. The stitched area looks slightly puffy and red. He reaches out a hand to feel if Cas is warm there, then remembers himself.

_Don’t touch me._

“Uh, can I?”

Cas bites his lip and nods. “Be careful.”

As if he would be anything but careful. Dean spots a package of plastic gloves sitting on the desk pulled up next to Cas’s bed, so he quickly pulls on a pair. Then, trying to remain as aloof and clinical as possible, he gently presses a finger to the skin along the stitches. It’s warm through the glove.

“How bad does that hurt?” Dean asks, taking his hand away.

Cas looks at Dean incredulously.

“Everything hurts,” he says. “It’s difficult to isolate one particular sensation.” Then he sighs. “It’s a little sore to the touch right there, though.”

Dean nods. He expected that.

“It doesn’t look too bad. Do you know if Andrew had a heating pad?” Cas shakes his head. “Well, I think a warm washcloth will do in a pinch. I can bring one back in, and you’ll need to keep it pressed to that area. What else do we need to take care of?”

Dean chooses not to point out the Cas didn’t really need any help with his stitches and that Sam would also know how to handle minor swelling. It makes him feel sort of ridiculously light inside, to know that Cas asked for him specifically, that Cas let Dean touch him despite his obvious misgivings.

“Eileen usually helps with the saline solution on my chest wounds.” Cas looks to the side, and Dean notes how his cheeks have turned red. “You don’t have to do that. I really need the most help checking the wounds on my feet.”

Right. Dean remembers seeing Cas’s feet as he carried him from The Bend. The skin had been carved away in strips. He wonders if Cas will ever be able to walk without aid again, if he’ll be able to heal completely now that there’s no doctor to supervise him. It’s not the first time Dean thinks about going back on his earlier protests and making a break for the nearest hospital. But after everything they’ve learned, how they now know that demons and angels alike can sense Cas, and taking into account what Dean knows of Seth’s utter, determined madness, hospitals don’t seem like an option.

“Okay,” Dean says, moving toward the end of the bed. “You’ve got painkillers in your system already, I’m guessing?” He doesn’t want to be the one to make Cas hurt. _Never again_. He shakes his head against the intrusive thought, and Cas looks at him oddly.

“Yes, I took some a few hours ago.”

“Okay,” Dean repeats, pulling back the blankets from Cas’s feet. The bandages on his feet aren’t taped to his skin like the ones on his chest, but rather wrapped around each foot. Dean carefully unravels one, aware of Cas’s eyes on him. When he gets to the skin, it’s not as bad as he remembered. He was expecting an injury equivalent to a third-degree burn, considering what he saw at The Bend — skin gone, red with only the raw meat of muscles left, nerves shot — but instead Cas’s feet look sort of shiny, almost wet, with white patches around the edges of the wounds. There’s still skin visible there, though it’s clearly damaged and the epidermis is mostly gone. Dean looks at Cas questioningly.

“My grace,” Cas says quietly. “I had a miniscule amount left in this body. It tried to heal the worst of my wounds. That’s how the demon found me — it was leaking through my feet and the holes in my skull.” Cas closes his eyes and slowly tilts his head back, giving him the appearance of a mourner praying to God at a gravesite. “I can’t even feel it now. I didn’t have much still with me in the first place, so —” He trails off for a moment. “Perhaps I used it up to save my life.”

“Well that’s worth it, isn’t it?”

Cas opens his eyes and gazes at Dean evenly.

“I doubt you’d think so, if you could remember everything.” He closes his eyes again, letting out a bitter laugh that frightens Dean. “And now I’ll never be able to find the rest of it.”

“Cas...” Dean doesn’t know what to say. He’s felt like that before, felt that deep-seated urge to curl up and die. Sam kept him going every time. Who does Cas have to keep him going?

 _You_ , an unhelpful thought surges up. _He needs you_.

 _No,_ Dean thinks, arguing with the independent voice in his head, _clearly our relationship was pretty fucked up. I am pretty sure he doesn’t need me — he needs someone better._

“Can you please help wash my feet?” Cas asks, eyes still closed, head resting at an uncomfortable angle against the headboard. “Then you can go.”

Dean nods, then realizing Cas can’t see him, says, “Yeah, yeah of course.” He spots a clean bowl sitting next to a bottle of saline solution. He pours the solution into the bowl, then eyes the way Cas’s feet are resting against the bed. He’ll have to sit on the edge of the bed to reach them.

“Okay.” Dean breathes out, picking up the bowl and a clean washcloth. Between Eileen and Andrew, at least the room is stocked. “I’m coming over.”

Cas lazily opens an eye just a slit, watching Dean as he carefully situates himself on the edge of the bed near Cas’s feet, trying hard not to disturb him too much — and also trying to go easy on his own side, where his rib still smarts. Once he’s seated, Dean balances the bowl in the middle of his lap then gingerly lifts Cas’s ankle, resting it on his leg.

“This might hurt,” he says uselessly, because no doubt Cas knows that already. Dean’s heard him crying out in pain more than once in the past few days, and it cuts him every time.

He soaks the washcloth in the solution and wrings it out, feeling it drip over his hands. Not too hot, not too cold. Dean carefully begins to wrap the cloth around Cas’s injured feet, not surprised when Cas jerks away and lets out a hiss of pain. Dean looks up to see his eyes are scrunched closed, his mouth contorted in a grimace.

“Hey,” he says softly. “I know it hurts, but I’ve gotta take care of this, okay? Otherwise it might get infected, and then you won’t heal.”

Again Cas opens one eye just a crack to look at Dean, then he nods and closes his eye again, straightening up in the bed like he’s steeling himself for the pain. God, Dean wishes he didn’t have to be the cause of it.

Dean resumes his work, wrapping the wet cloth around one foot, then moving it just slightly toward his knee so he has room to bring up the other foot, resting it on his leg. He realizes belatedly he forget to grab a second washcloth, but luckily there’s one sitting close enough to the edge of the table that he can reach it without stretching too far. Dean repeats the process on Cas’s other foot then sits still, not wanting to move and disturb the loose wrapping. He remembers doing this for a bad burn on his elbow once, back when he was hunting alone. He thinks you’re supposed to soak the injured skin for a couple of minutes at a time.

He looks up to see Cas’s eyes are fully open now, and for once he’s not looking at Dean warily, but almost... fondly? Dean feels a blush start to creep across his cheekbones, unbidden.

“What?”

Cas shakes his head slightly, schooling his expression into something more neutral.

“You can put my feet down, Dean.”

“I know that,” Dean huffs, but he doesn’t move. When Cas raises his eyebrows in question, Dean just shrugs. “It’s good to elevate injuries,” he bullshits, but it almost, not quite, gets him a small smile. Dean realizes, with no shock whatsoever at the revelation, that he would do anything to get Cas to smile at him for real. 

///

“This forecast is crazy,” Sam says over dinner.

Dean picks at his sandwich, wondering when they’re going to eat through Andrew’s food and need to go out for more. Eileen still looks tired, though she’s happier now that Sam and Dean have finally stepped up to help care for Cas. She leans over and rests her head on Sam’s shoulder, looking at his laptop with him.

“That does look bad,” she murmurs, pointing at something on the screen. “That’s an oddly large warm front moving in for this time of year.”

Dean finally gives in and stands up, moving around behind the lovebirds to get a look at the forecast. Indeed, there’s a wide swath of red churning into purple right over Nebraska, just to the west of them. He lets out a low whistle.

“That’s massive,” he says, walking back around to his seat so Eileen can read his lips. “Well, at least there’s a storm shelter out back, and hey — at least it’s hitting The Bend right now.” The center of the storm is right over the hunter’s community. “If they came back after the cops scared ‘em off then they’re getting hammered.”

His brother and sister-in-law nod.

“We need to leave,” Eileen says. “It’s bad enough to stay here with a dead demon in the yard, and those wards won’t last forever, but also...” She bites her lip.

“Andrew’s clinic called today,” Sam finishes for her. “I guess he had the weekend off, but now they’re worried that he hasn’t shown up. They left a message on his phone asking for him to call in.”

“If they come out here…” Eileen fiddles absently with her fork. “We could be in real trouble.”

Eileen hasn’t said anything about Andrew, but Dean feels guilty all the same, looking at the wet sheen in her eyes. She doesn’t blame Cas, but he knows how terrible it feels to come to someone for help, only for them to wind up getting killed because of it. He knows if he turns his head he’d be able to see the small pile of dirt covering the hurried grave he and Sam dug for the doctor. Dean’s stomach turns.

“No one will be out once that storm hits,” Sam says, closing his laptop. “And I don’t think we should move Cas just yet. Give it a day or two, just so his feet start scabbing over and we don’t have to worry so much about infection.”

Dean doesn’t say anything, but he shoots his brother a small smile. He’s immensely grateful that now everyone is aboard the Save Cas train. He’s not sure what all Cas said to Sam earlier, but whatever it was, at least now Sam’s convinced that they owe the angel a debt, too.

Eileen, however, purses her lips.

“I don’t want us to be trapped here,” she says. “Most of our weapons are at the bunker, and we’ve got an angel radiating grace in the front bedroom.”

“Not anymore,” Dean says, and Sam and Eileen look at him questioningly. “He told me he can’t feel it, so it’s either gone or hibernating or something.” Dean shifts uncomfortably, remembering Cas’s melancholy. “It used itself up trying to save his life.”

“So he’s not an angel anymore?” Sam asks, and Dean shrugs.

“I don’t think so. I don’t think he was all Energizer Bunny in the first place. And now his batteries are drained.”

Eileen sighs, rubbing a hand over her red eyes.

“Fine,” she says. “One problem down. But that doesn’t negate the fact that we’re stuck here if we don’t leave now. So I’m going to go to bed, and I hope you two —” She points at the brothers. “— can think of a reasonable defense plan while I sleep.” She stands up, pushing her chair back and yawning. “Dean, you’re on Cas’s dream duty tonight.” Then she leaves, walking off to the bedroom she and Sam share, and Dean doesn’t even think to protest.

“Dude,” Sam says once his wife is gone, “what’s our plan for defending this place if we have to? We’ve got like four or five guns and the demon knife, some table salt maybe, basic repelling wards, three hunters and a busted-up angel.”

Dean shrugs.

“Well,” he says, looking out over the dark yard, and he swears he sees a bolt of lightning, massive, fierce and bright, sparking across the sky in the distant west. “We do what we always do. We improvise.”


	15. Prayers

Dean sleeps fitfully on the couch, so he’s awake and up within seconds when he hears Cas crying out.

Ignoring his basic instincts, Dean enters the bedroom quietly, not rushing straight for the bed. He says, “Cas” in a low, sleep rough voice, but the lump under the covers continues to toss. He can just make out the messy head of hair peeking out from under the blankets in the light from the doorway.

Dean reaches out and touches Cas’s shoulder in a spot where he knows he’s not hurt too badly, because Cas let him help wash the carved sigils on his chest earlier. Cas didn’t talk much, and he didn’t tell Dean what the sigils were when he asked.

“Cas,” Dean repeats, and he shakes Cas a little harder. He starts, halfway sitting up before his cuts make themselves known and he slides back down onto the bed.

“Dean,” he says, looking up once his breathing evens out some. His eyes are wet, and Dean sees wet tracks glistening on his cheeks. “You don’t have to be here. You can go. They usually stop after the first one.”

Letting go of Cas’s shoulder, Dean silently pulls up the chair.

“I know I apparently told you this is creepy,” Dean says when Cas looks at him pointedly. “But uh, I actually sleep better sometimes when I know someone’s looking out for me.”

“Someone being Sam,” Cas says, and Dean says, “Yeah.” He almost leaves it at that, but, like he can’t help himself, he blurts out, “And sometimes I feel like someone else is there? Uh. I know that doesn’t make any sense, but for the last couple of years I’ve kind of...” Dean trails off, looking for a way to describe this that doesn’t make him sound batshit insane. “I’ve felt this presence, I guess. And sometimes it stresses me out, I’m not gonna lie. It almost makes me feel... guilty? And Sam says he catches me talking to it all the time and he hates it, but sometimes at night when I’m not sleeping well I — Uh, I talk to it then. And I feel better, like I’m not alone.”

His rushed speech ends like a car hitting a brick wall, and Dean can’t even look at Cas, feeling inexplicably bare. Sam hates when Dean talks about this, about his “ghost,” and Dean hates letting himself be this vulnerable.

But Cas just says softly, “When did this start? When did you first feel this presence?”

Dean looks up at him, surprised to see Cas evaluating him with that same concern he showed that day in the yard at The Bend, when Dean was overwhelmed by a sudden headache. _He meant so much to you_ , Dean’s brain supplies, and he starts to feel that slight ache again, both in his head and his heart. _How could you lose him?_

“Um,” he says, not sure whether to continue. He came in here to comfort Cas, not to be comforted. Everything is the wrong way around, his head is all jumbled, but Dean can’t stay silent in the face of Cas’s caring eyes. “About three years ago? I started talking to walls, man, like the narrator in _Fight Club_ — only I’m pretty sure I’m not also Tyler Durden in this scenario.” Cas scrunches his eyebrows together in a face that seems to say clearly, _I don’t understand that reference._ Dean sighs. “I don’t know. It’s more like I’m looking for someone, I think. Looking for someone I lost.” _And maybe it was you._

Cas tilts his head, which only pushes it further into his pillow. His eyes are watering again, and Dean thinks _I fucked up_. But Cas reaches out and lays a hand on his knee and suddenly Dean can’t breathe.

“Prayers,” Cas says wonderingly. “I wonder...”

“That’s what Sam said.” Dean’s weirded out that their response was the same. “He wasn’t sure why that came to mind.”

Cas rolls his eyes, but there’s a very slight, almost unnoticeable grin on his lips.

“I’m an angel, Dean. An angel who exited your life three years ago.”

Dean blinks at him then — oh. _Oh._

“It was you,” he says, excited and confused and strangely hopeful. “I gotta tell you, I was thinking there had to be reason that when I’m closer to you, or at least when I’m talking to you, it stops. I was praying to you?”

“Maybe,” Cas says, then he sighs sort of sadly and any hint of a grin is gone. “You’ve clearly retained some deep-seated memories of our time together, though it likely pains you physically and emotionally to try to recall them. Whatever you and Sam did to yourselves, it was powerful magic.”

 _Our time together_. It sounds almost monumental when Cas says it like that, and Dean can’t help but say, “Cas, what happened with us?”

Cas pulls his hand away from Dean’s knee. A long silence follows, and Dean’s sure that Cas is going to clam up again, kick him out, maybe even start yelling like he did that night the demon came and he broke down over killing Andrew.

But then Cas says, “You made me leave. I was burden on you, and I’d failed you too many times, and finally you had Sam tell me to go.” His voice cracks slightly and Dean longs to reach out for him, but he knows he shouldn’t. “We were friends for a long time, Dean. But then you decided that you didn’t want me anymore. And that was the end.”

Dean swallows roughly, feeling tears start to prick in his eyes. He knew it, all this time. He knew he did something wrong. He knew he failed someone. He knew he lost someone, even if he never wanted to examine that feeling too closely, never wanted to give it a name.

It was Cas. Of course it was Cas.

“But I prayed to you,” he says weakly. “Why would I want you to go and then want you to come back?”

Cas just looks at him, so sad and small when he says, “I don’t know, Dean. I’ve wondered the same thing for years. When I saw you at The Bend I thought I might finally have the chance to get everything off my chest, to ask you _why._ But you didn’t remember me.” Cas blinks, and Dean watches in distress as a tear falls from the eye not pressed into his pillow. “You thought I was James Novak, and he’s been dead for years. You knew he was dead, but you still thought...” Cas closes his eyes. “And I knew then I would never get my answers. You chose to forget me, Dean, and now I can’t even be angry at you properly because you have no idea what you’ve done. And I want — I want to be angry with you and with Sam; I want to hate you both.”

He opens his eyes again. They’re shining with unshed tears, and now Dean’s crying like a fucking child, lost and confused and wishing that someone who knows better would come and fix this — but Dean’s never had that in his life, never had someone to fix things for him, not even as a kid. It’s always been up to him to patch up his own problems and everyone else’s, and look where that got him. Look where it got Cas.

“Look at you,” Cas says, and his voice breaks on the words. “I still can’t hate you.”

“I’m sorry,” Dean tells him, barely refraining from reaching out the way Cas did earlier. “Whatever happened, I know it was my fault. I _know_ , I’m sorry...”

Cas sighs again, heavy and long, then lets out a shuddering hiccup of a sob like he can’t hold it in any longer and Dean can’t control himself, he leans forward and places a trembling hand on Cas’s cheek, careful to miss the spots where the helmet bored into his skull. Cas leans up into the touch.

“I don’t know what happened,” Dean says brokenly. “But I know that I never should have forgotten you.”

“Dean.” Cas shakes his head, moving away from Dean’s hand. “You don’t know anything about me or what I’ve done. If you remembered me, you’d hate me. You had to have hated me to do what you did. You _had_ to.”

And Dean should say, _I know you stood between me and those angels and that demon. I know it broke your heart to hurt Andrew. I know you trust people too easily, because you trusted Seth. Because you trusted me. I know you’re on a journey you shouldn’t take alone. I know you feel much more than any angel should feel. I know you look at me like I’m important, like I matter and you care about me. I know that something in me calls to you, and I never want you to leave again. I know I could never hate you, could never even come close._

“You’re Cas,” Dean says out loud, too choked up to get out anything else. “I know you matter to me. And I know I don’t hate you.”

_I missed you._

Dean’s hand shakes where it rests atop Cas’s blankets. He knows that thought, that _I love you_ , is true, like he knew Cas was important from the moment he saw him again, even when he believed him to be James Novak, the father of a distant friend. Dean loves Cas and it doesn’t make any difference, because whatever he can’t remember, whatever reason he had for forcing Cas out of his life, for making himself forget Cas, will always be between them. He can’t fix that.

Cas gently takes Dean’s hand and lifts it off the bed, bringing it to Dean’s lap. He’s stopped crying, but he looks miserable.

“Dean,” he says. “My nightmares are often about you. You being here won’t help me sleep.”

It’s not said unkindly, but Dean knows it’s a dismissal, final and absolute. He nods stiffly, holding back his own tears as he quickly leaves Cas alone in the dark again.


	16. Dumb Things

The storm finally hits their hideout with a vengeance. Two days pass in a haze of constant rain and lightning, the Winchesters taking turns to check on Cas and to watch the forecast updates. It’s been a week since they rescued him from The Bend, but Cas still doesn’t say much — not to Dean and not to Sam. He jokes around some with Eileen, never letting her dig too deep into his past with the Winchesters.

On the third straight day of the storm Sam watches the downpour through the windows. The rain is so thick he can’t see past the back porch. Eileen stands next to him, nursing her coffee and occasionally glancing toward the couch. Dean’s still under the blankets, hiding from the world even though it’s late enough in the morning that he would usually be up. Sam doesn’t bother to try to wake him, knowing there’s no way Dean’s sleeping through the thudding of the rain and the roar of the thunder that seems to constantly crack right above them.

Eileen turns to him and signs, _“Should we go to the storm shelter?”_

Sam shakes his head. _“I don’t know if it’s safe — we didn’t ward it.”_

She bites her lip and nods, turning back to the window. _Some honeymoon,_ Sam thinks, then he wonders if one of them should go check on Cas. They might need to move out quickly, whether he’s healed up or not. It makes Sam itch to stay in one place too long with unknown threats prowling outside, trying to circle around them. Grace depleted or not, Cas is apparently a beacon of bad luck, and someone needs to go tell him to prep for a quick escape if necessary.

But Sam doesn’t want to talk to him. He remembers Cas’s accusations all too well, how hard his eyes looked when he told Sam that he was the one to make Cas leave the bunker. Sam wonders if Cas told Dean something similar, if that’s why his brother is walking around unnaturally quiet and cowering under his covers. Dean’s not afraid of storms, but he’s terrified of letting people down.

So Sam says, “I’m going to go turn on the weather channel,” and Eileen follows him into the kitchen. Andrew apparently never invested in cable, but his house does have wifi that Sam uses to look up the latest forecast on his laptop. The weather woman from a Lincoln news station comes on screen, pointing to a map of the state that’s covered in deep reds and purples.

“Folks, this is the Big One,” she says, and Sam can practically hear the capital letters. “If you don’t have a place to take shelter, I recommend you find one. There’s no discernable front causing this storm — no way to tell which direction it's headed because it seems to change course so fast. I have never seen anything like it, and I strongly urge you to remain indoors until it’s passed. We’re looking at winds in excess of 50 miles per hour, heavy rain and near constant lightning strikes. Dale —” The weather woman turns to the lead anchor’s desk. “— I think there’s a definite possibility of some funnel cloud formation here, even though it’s not tornado season.”

The camera pans over to Dale, who says grimly, “Thank you, Monica. Well, you heard her, folks. This storm is a doozy. Stay inside, stay alive.”

As if timed perfectly a bolt of lightning illuminates the outside air, causing the entire house to be filled with blinding bright light, followed immediately by the loudest crack of thunder Sam’s ever heard. His laptop sparks at the charger, and the screen abruptly goes black as every light in the house goes off, plunging them into darkness.

“Goddamn it!” Sam shouts, jumping back from the sparking laptop. “We got hit!”

Eileen pushes him out of the kitchen, back toward the dining room windows where she can see his lips and hands better.

 _“I think there’s a backup generator,”_ she signs. _“In the basement. Andrew used it once before while I was here.”_

 _“Okay,”_ Sam signs back. _“Do you want to go work on that? I’ll go outside and check out the storm shelter to see how much it’s flooded, just in case we do need to take cover.”_

He doesn’t say it, but the panic in the voices of the newscasters and the sudden, perfectly timed lightning strike have him spooked. This weather is not natural, not even for Tornado Alley. Storms don’t come out of nowhere. Weather should have patterns, unless —

 _“Demon?”_ Eileen signs, just one word, and suddenly Sam feels like he’s in the Impala, driving through another massive, unforeseen downpour. _He asked Dean about Cas..._

 _“Yeah.”_ Sam shakes his head and looks out over the yard, or what he can see of it, backlit in brief bursts of lightning, like someone’s rapidly taking flash photos in a dark room. The rain pelts the windows steadily, and the house shakes with another clap of thunder. _“I think it has to be.”_

_“If it is a demon...” Dean trails off, looking out the window of the Impala. Sam stares back at him, trying to read his brother. Dean’s so worried — worried about Cas, probably worried about himself and the after effects of Amara messing with head. They just got Cas back, and Sam knows Dean finally said something about whatever it is that’s between them — and then they had to leave Cas in the bunker alone. That has to be affecting his thoughts on this case. Sam asks, “What else would it be?”_

_You were wrong,_ Sam thinks, out of nowhere, and his head starts to ache as another bolt, too close, fills the dining room with light. _You were wrong then, you’re wrong now._

“Sam?” Eileen touches his shoulder, dragging his attention back to her. “Do you want me to come with you, then we can go check on the generator together?”

He nods, suddenly not wanting to be alone. If it makes him cowardly, so be it. He’s married now. He and Eileen are supposed to have each other’s backs during times like this.

“I’m going to wake up Dean,” he says, because it can’t hurt to have the other person he trusts most in the world alert and on the lookout. “Maybe look for a flashlight?”

Eileen nods, then heads back to the kitchen to rummage through Andrew’s junk drawer. Sam goes to the living room, peering over the couch to find Dean’s blankets crumpled at one end. He purses his lips together. He never saw Dean get up.

Sam looks across the room, just able to see Cas’s slightly open door. Dean’s probably in there. He jogs lightly through the living room, not sure why it feels so urgent that he reach his brother _right now_ , but he just has this unsettled feeling, like Dean’s about to do something dumb and he needs to stop him. Call it a special sixth sense, honed by decades of watching his older brother put himself in harm’s way again and again. Whether or not Dean trusts Cas completely, and despite the fact that Sam’s now fairly certain they were once friends with the angel, Sam’s still not sure what to think of him. Cas has an odd effect on Dean, makes him soft and unsure, and Sam doesn’t like that.

He reaches the bedroom door and pushes it all the way open, expecting to find Dean sitting in the chair next to Cas’s bed, helping him change his bandages. But the chair is empty and so is the bed. The table of medical supplies looks like it’s been swept clean, and the little pile of Andrew’s old clothes that Eileen set aside for Cas to wear is gone.

“Fuck,” Sam snaps, rubbing his temple. “Fuck, fuck!”

He runs to the front door, hesitating only a second before throwing it open. Andrew’s car is still there, parked toward the side of the house, but there’s no sign of Sam’s Volvo.

Dean and Cas are gone.

///

“You do this too often,” Cas remarks quietly, the first words he’s said since Dean bundled him up and deposited him in the front seat of Sam’s car.

Dean’s grateful for the break in the silence. Cas went with him easily enough when Dean entered his room and said, “We need to go get the rest of your grace.” He’s following a sudden urge that overtook him in the night as the wind raged harder than ever, a wild thought that whispered _this is how you fix it — you fight the storm and find his grace._ Dean’s relief that Cas just said, “Alright,” and went with it is nearly matched by his relief that Cas is finally talking to him again after more than thirty minutes of hearing nothing but roaring thunder and the steady beat of rain pouring around the car.

“Do what?” Dean has to keep his eyes on the road or they’ll be pushed off into the bar ditch by the wind. He has the radio on and tuned to a weather station, and he’s headed west because the storm’s moving east. He hopes it will pass them by soon. This car is not made for sticking to the road in weather like this.

“You do dumb things without consulting your brother,” Cas says. “You’re still trying to keep him out of danger, even though he’s an adult and married and a fully capable hunter.” There’s a pause, and Dean winces because that’s all true, and of course Cas already knew all that. Cas knows everything about him, apparently. Then Cas concedes, “I can’t judge. I had the same modus operandi when it came to you.”

“What dumb things did you do then, huh?” Dean asks, a little miffed that they’re on such uneven footing. Cas knows Dean’s biggest weakness — Sam — and Dean still knows so little about Cas, other than he used to be an angel, and now he’s not. He used to be Dean’s friend, and now he’s not.

“Dean, do you remember how you got out of Hell?” Cas asks suddenly. Dean stares at the road through the rain and the rough sweep of the windshield wipers. What kind of question is that? Of course he remembers how he got out of Hell.

“The angels sent a legion in after me. They pulled me out to become a vessel.” He can’t help it if spits out that last sentence angrily. He still hates how Heaven manipulated him and Sam for years, trying to mold the brothers into their perfect puppets for the coming apocalypse. “Uriel and Balthazar were our main contacts. Assholes, both of ‘em. Uriel bit it pretty quickly. Balthazar died in the civil war in Heaven that followed us putting Lucifer and Michael in the cage.”

Cas’s voice is quiet when he says, “Who won the civil war?”

Dean shrugs.

“No one, far as I know. The two sides slaughtered themselves, and the leviathan escaped in the aftermath. So that was a fun mess for us to have to clean up.”

“And what caused the angels to fall?”

“Metatron, or Metadouche, as I like to call him. What an ass.”

“And how did Lucifer escape the cage the second time?”

Dean’s so tempted to take his eyes off the road, to ask Cas, _why are you asking me all this? What good does this history do?_ But he says, “Rowena, a witch, helped him get out.”

Cas says, so softly Dean can barely hear him, “Who was his vessel?”

That migraine is back and building. Dean closes his eyes, just for a second, to try to clear his head. When he opens them, he can barely see the road for the rain. He starts to slow the car.

“Some dude who looked kind of like Rick Springfield,” Dean says, even though it feels like half of his brain is screaming _WRONG!_ He sees an exit sign glowing in the headlights and directs the car to it. They can’t drive any further, not with the visibility this poor. Not when his head aches this much.

As they come off the exit ramp, Dean scans the informational sign on the side of the road. It says there’s a motel to the left. He makes the turn, wincing when he doesn’t see the curb in the water rushing along the edges of the road, knocking the front bender against it. He hopes Sam isn’t too attached to this piece of shit’s paint job.

They drive in subdued silence until they reach the motel parking lot, which is completely swamped. Dean turns the engine off but makes no move to get out, wondering how best to carry Cas and their stuff to a room in this downpour.

“That’s all wrong,” Cas says, and Dean does turn to look at him for the first time, surprised to hear him pick up their earlier thread of conversation. “All of that, all of your memories that are gone, those are of dumb things I did.” He sighs heavily, staring at nothing. “Dumb things I did for you.”

It should be yet another earth-shattering revelation, yet Dean’s not a bit shocked. Cas is important. The spaces he left behind are vast, and Dean wants to know them all, every single one, to understand what he’s been missing since Cas left. Since Sam and Dean made him leave. Dean leans his throbbing head against the cold window, waiting for Cas to continue.

“I pulled you out of Hell,” Cas says, and Dean thinks, _of course it was you._ “I risked great injury to get to you first, before all my brothers and sisters, just because I was fascinated by the light of your soul. I was your angelic contact, and eventually I rebelled for you. I started that civil war in Heaven to keep you safe, and I won it at great cost. It was my fault the leviathan escaped, my fault the angels fell. It was my fault Lucifer escaped the cage; I let him out because I wanted to be of use to you.” He laughs bitterly, and Dean feels his eyes start to water from an odd mix of a pounding headache and a throbbing sense of heartbreak. “I was his vessel, and Amara ripped him from me and killed him, but he took most of my grace on his way out. I was too weak to pull it back.”

“Cas —” Dean says softly, trying to grasp these wisps of memories Cas has let loose into the air, but they slip through his fingers. He can see them, but he can’t claim them. It’s all true, every word, he _knows_ it, but he can’t _remember_ it.

“Don’t, Dean.” Cas smiles sadly at him. “Don’t try too hard to change your memories. You don’t want them, not really, or you wouldn’t have given them up.”

“Cas, I’m here because of you,” Dean says desperately. “I do want the memories; I want you to find your grace. Cas, I want you...”

“Don’t.” Cas says it more sharply this time. “Don’t say that.”

They stare at each other, the winds shuddering around them. In the bursts of lightning Cas’s face looks otherworldly, his unnatural blue eyes stoic and yet so incredibly sad and ancient and tired, and Dean wonders how he ever thought Cas was nothing but an ordinary human. Even wounded and lost and broken, wrapped tightly in a quilt stolen from a dead man’s home, Cas looks like something magnificent, immoveable. Something unattainable.

“We should go inside before we get swept away,” Cas says finally, and Dean thinks, _I’ve already been swept away_. But he says, “Okay, yeah,” and rushes out into the rain, hurrying to the other side of the car and getting soaked in matter of seconds. He quickly opens the door and carefully scoops Cas into his arms, mindful of the still sensitive wounds on his chest and feet. Every time he picks Cas up it causes a sharp, stabbing pain to shoot through his fractured rib, but Dean’s used to ignoring his own aches thanks to a lifetime of practice.

They make a run for the door together, Dean carrying Cas and fighting the currents in the small rivers that run through the parking lot, getting his jeans soaked past his ankles.

When they reach the awning of the check-in desk, there’s a moment when Cas looks up at him through drowned dark hair and dripping eyelashes and Dean wants to kiss him. He’s overwhelmed by the feeling, certain it’s not new or unknown. He’s wanted this for years, longed for it, hoped for it. It’s as sure as his love for Sam and his trust in Baby, as sure as the adoration he already feels for Cas — he wants _more_ , has wanted more for so damn long that the feeling has carved itself into his very bones. But he doesn’t lean in, doesn’t press his lips to Cas’s, doesn’t vocalize his “I love you” because Cas wouldn’t want him to. Dean’s not even sure what it means, to love this man he chose to forget. He doesn’t know what kind of person that makes him, and it frightens him more than the somber look in Cas’s blue eyes.

The moment passes.


	17. Take Care

It’s the middle of the day, but dark clouds are blotting out the sun and Dean’s exhausted.

His headache rivals the worst one he’s ever had — one he got when he was eighteen and stupid and drank an entire bottle of vodka to impress a girl whose name he can no longer recall. He groans and shoves his face into a pillow, safe to wallow now that Cas is situated on the other bed. Cas is propped up against his own pillows, dry and warm under the covers, watching a documentary about space exploration on mute.

Dean’s face heats up just thinking about him. Only a few minutes earlier he helped Cas strip out of his loose, damp sweatpants and baggy t-shirt, leaving him just in white boxers. Cas was clearly embarrassed and uncomfortable to be so bare in front of Dean, so Dean tried not to stare too long, looking away as Cas crawled under the blankets, covering himself from the waist down. Cas is too thin for what is obviously a normally solid frame, and Dean can see his ribs underneath the bandages covering the cuts and scabs in the lines of sigils on his chest. Even still, the sight of all that skin, broken or not, heats Dean up. He hates himself for it. Cas is wounded, emotionally and physically, and Dean’s over here thinking about how much he’d like to lay him out on the bed and...

No. He’s not going to let his brain or his dick go there. He shoves his face further into the pillow. At least the total darkness seems to ease his migraine.

“Dean,” Cas says, and Dean resists groaning as he rolls over to look at him. He was just getting ready to sleep. “How are we going to find it?”

It takes a second for Dean to process what Cas is asking before he remembers, _that’s_ _right, I ran off with him to find the rest of his grace._ It seemed like a good idea at the time — get some time alone with Cas to work out his missing memories, keep Sam and Eileen safe from everyone who’s after Cas. Now he doesn’t know what he was thinking. They’ve got no leads apart from that weird pull in Dean’s chest that urged him out of bed this morning and pulled him west, through the storm.

God, it’s a miracle they didn’t wreck on the way here, wherever here is. Still somewhere in Nebraska.

“I don’t know,” Dean tells Cas honestly. “I’m guessing all your notes on possible locations are at The Bend?”

Cas nods miserably. “They took them,” he says. “Before they took me to that room and...” He closes his eyes, turning his face away.

“Cas?” Dean slowly sits up, testing out his headache. His temples aren’t throbbing so much now. He leans toward the other bed. “I know you probably don’t want to talk about this, but do you have any idea how Seth found out what you are?”

Cas gingerly touches the bandages on his chest, then he looks at Dean and says, “I told Seth and the rest of them I was looking for angel grace to heal someone. They didn’t know it was my grace.” He looks off at nothing, remembering. “I’d been tracking it, picking up on signs. I think it must have splintered into pieces when Amara ripped Lucifer out of me; I’d hear about more than one miracle occurring at the exact same time — spring crops growing in the dead of winter, a long empty lake refilling. I’d go to those spots, and sometimes I’d even feel its after-effects. But I only ever managed to catch one tiny fragment, trapped in a small canyon in Utah. It sprouted an oak tree there, right in the middle of the desert.” Cas fists the blankets in his lap and sighs. “But every other time it would drift just out of my grasp — gone before I ever arrived. I was getting desperate, and I’d heard of Seth’s… reputation. I knew he’d tracked angels before. I gambled that he wouldn’t be able to guess what I was. And I was wrong.”

“He hates angels,” Dean says. “Most hunters do, but I mean... he really, really does. He ranted about them the one time Sam and I ever worked with him, said they’d destroyed his life.”

Dean thinks about that conversation, the way Seth’s eyes shone with rage as he spit the word “angel” out through cracked lips. It made Dean uncomfortable, so he’d quickly changed the subject.

“He told me the same thing before he started carving up my chest,” Cas says, too mildly for the topic of conversation at hand. “Then he told me he was going to get my grace for himself.”

Dean wrinkles his nose in confusion.

“But humans need angelic help to harness it,” he says. “That’s why almost no one ever gets their hands on any — angels don’t want to help us.” He sees the way Cas’s eyes drift sadly downward at that statement, and he quickly adds, “At least, most don’t.”

“I did,” Cas says quietly. “I do. I thought if I got the rest of it back, I would get my purpose back with it. I could start helping people again, healing them again, doing more than the occasional hunt. I would be useful.”

It’s important to Cas to feel useful, Dean realizes. He’s afraid of being unneeded. Dean and Sam certainly didn’t help him any on that front.

“You’ve been hunting?” Dean asks, choosing to avoid the minefield of finding purpose for now, at least till he has a better idea of how exactly they’re going to get the rest of Cas’s grace back.

Cas huffs a laugh. “Sometimes, just simple salt and burns. But I — I mostly work at a diner and clean houses for my landlady.”

Dean pictures Cas in an apron taking orders and blushes. So he has a thing for wait staff, sue him. They smell like food; it’s comforting.

“What diner?” He wonders if he’s ever been there, if maybe Cas passed by his table and avoided him.

Cas shakes his head.

“Dean, I’m going back there once this is over. I don’t think it would be... prudent, for me to tell you where I live.”

“Right.” Dean doesn’t bother to school his face, to hide how his heart sinks. Of course Cas doesn’t want to give any more of himself away to Dean. The angel who rescued him from Hell now works as a waiter, disowned by the humans he helped save. “Sorry.”

“I want to,” Cas whispers, so softly Dean almost doesn’t catch it. “But...”

“You don’t trust me,” Dean finishes for him. “Hey, I get it. Whatever I said to you at the end there, I know it was bad.” Cas looks away, and Dean sees his eyes are wet. He feels like shit. “I wish I could take it back, Cas, whatever happened. If that helps.”

Cas stares at the muted television, and Dean feels the chasm of everything unsaid and unremembered between them more acutely than ever. _You can’t fix it_ , he thinks again, uselessly. _You broke it and you can’t fix it._

“I hate that you don’t remember,” Cas says finally, breaking the silence, “but I selfishly enjoy being with you again. I enjoy you —” He swallows hard. “— caring about me again, even if I don’t understand why you’re doing all of this for me. It’s complicated, Dean.” He turns to look at Dean. “Because I’ve missed you and yet I’ve also hoped to never see you again.”

Dean wants to ask for the whole story, for the blow-by-blow account of the day they forced Cas out of the bunker. But he can’t bring himself to make Cas retell the story of what was undoubtedly one of the worst days of both of their lives.

“I missed you, too.” It’s the truth. That hole in his life, those whispers to the walls, that was all Cas. “I don’t know how, but I knew you were gone and I wanted you back.”

Maybe it’s not fair to Cas for Dean to say that, but he can’t hold it in anymore, not with everything — relief, sadness, worry, guilt, affection — inside him bursting to overflow. Dean’s not crazy. He never was. He was looking for the angel on his shoulder, and he doesn’t care if that angel is now a broken man, careful and cautious with the pieces he has left of himself, lying two feet and miles away from Dean on a crappy motel bed.

“I’m here for you now,” Dean tells him. “For however long you need or want me. And we’ll find your grace, Cas, I swear.”

“You’ve said similar things before.” Cas smiles, but it’s so sad and small, just a sliver of what Dean somehow knows he’s capable of. It’s the worn, tired smile of someone who can’t bear to fight anymore. Dean recognizes it from the face he sometimes catches in the mirror. “It didn’t turn out well, Dean.”

“Well, things are different now,” Dean says, maybe a little shortly. “I’m not that guy. I don’t remember that guy. The guy that I am now is not gonna let you down again.”

Cas just bites his lip and turns his attention back to the TV, allowing an uncomfortable silence to fall. He never lets these conversations get too far. Dean knows it’s a self-protection mechanism, looking away and changing the subject, because he pulls that shit on Sam all the time.

Dean decides not to push him. He owes Cas that much.

“Should we change your bandages?” he asks, and Cas does look at him then, almost grateful. Dean grins. “It’s about time, right?” Cas nods, easing up a little higher against the headboard.

Dean gets out the duffle he dumped Cas’s medical stuff in. There’s not a lot to do for his chest now — it’s mostly scabbed over and the stitches have started to dissolve — but put new bandages and antibiotic cream on the cuts. Cas could probably do this part himself, but he lets Dean gently ease the sticky edges of the bandages away from his skin before he takes over applying the cream himself. Dean sits on the edges of the bed and watches his slender fingers work.

Now that the wounds are healing and Cas’s chest is free of blood, he can make out some of the letters Seth carved into his skin.

“Is — Is that _Enochian_?”

Cas’s fingers halt. He looks up at Dean.

“Yes,” he says slowly. “Sigils to hold back my grace. This —” He gestures to the scabbing marks. “— is why it didn’t retreat back fully once it tried to heal my extremities. It had nowhere to go. It’s like my body is warded against itself.”

“Jesus.” Dean reaches for a fresh roll of bandages, looking at Cas’s injuries with a new level of disgust for the man who put them there. “How would he have even known how to do that?”

Cas lifts his shoulders in a slight shrug.

“I don’t know. Not many humans understand Enochian so well — at least none that I’ve ever met, besides you and Sam perhaps.” He absent-mindedly touches one of the cuts crossing over his abdomen. “I’ll have to break some of these before we try to get the rest of my grace back.”

Dean winces at the thought of Cas marking up his body even more, drawing lines through the Enochian lettering already carved into his skin.

“I’ll be more careful than Seth was, Dean,” Cas says, clearly sensing Dean’s distress. “What’s a few more scars?”

“You shouldn’t have any,” Dean responds, surprising himself with the fierceness of the statement. “The fact that someone would do this to you —”

“Dean.” Cas tilts his head, looking at Dean with such warmth and affection it makes Dean want to crawl under the blankets with him, rest his head on Cas’s shoulder, sleep through this storm. He wishes he knew how to get Cas to look at him like that all the time. “Scars are just part of life.”

“Not like this,” Dean mumbles, helping Cas begin to cover his back up. He doesn’t say anything more, doesn’t even ask about the Enochian tattoo on Cas’s hip, though he’s dying to know what kind of ward it is. For protection, he thinks, if he’s reading the letters right. “Okay, so your feet...”

“I should probably soak them today.” Cas sighs. Dean knows he hates dealing with the wounds on his feet more than anything else. They’re sensitive, still somewhat raw, though now scabs have started to form. “Can you...”

“Yeah.” Cas also hates asking Dean to carry him, so more often than not Dean volunteers, ignoring the twinging ache in his side every time he lifts Cas up. He knows what it feels like to be hopelessly dependent on someone else, and for someone like Cas, someone who places so much of his worth on his usefulness to others, asking for help is particularly hard. Dean relates. “Uh, do you wanna put on...”

Now he can’t finish his sentences.

Cas blushes. “Pants, right... Um, it might be easier without?”

“Right, yeah. Let me just go run some water.”

Dean practically falls off the bed in his rush to the bathroom, excitement and lust and confusion warring in his mind. Cas in boxers again, and this time Dean will be carrying him. _Pull it the fuck together, Winchester._

He turns the water in the tub on, running his hand under the spout until the temperature is right, relieved to note that there’s no visible mold lining the bottom. You never know with motel bathrooms. It’s always kind of a shot in the dark. Dean plugs the drain, thinks of a few porn scenarios he’s watched that he could be starring in right now, and shakes his head frantically. _This is not about sex_.

Cas is perched on the edge of the bed when Dean comes out of the bathroom, still in nothing but boxers, his feet held carefully off the floor. He’s so worn and lost, curled in on himself and looking at his hands, that Dean forgets his libido for a second.

“I think we’re ready,” he tells Cas, who looks up and nods. Dean tries not to touch Cas without fair warning, so he moves slowly and deliberately to the bed, half kneeling as he puts one arm around Cas’s back, the other behind his knees. He lifts more from his back than his knees — bad habit — and wobbles a little as he stands. Cas places a hand on his chest and suddenly Dean feels like he can’t breathe.

“Are you okay?” Cas asks, and Dean swallows.

“Yeah, fine. Let’s get you to the bath.”

_Fuck._

Dean watches too much porn. Now he’s the one who’s blushing, looking up and away from Cas, mentally kicking himself for sounding so sleazy. Cas huffs a quiet laugh that Dean can feel against his chest.

“Hey,” Dean says with faux seriousness, carrying Cas into the bathroom. “I didn’t mean it like that.”

“Regardless, you know it sounded like —”

“Yeah, yeah.” Dean carefully lowers Cas to the edge of the tub, helping him swing his legs around to put his feet in the water before letting go. “I’m a walking porno. So Sam has said.”

He winks lasciviously, trying to make it all a big joke, but Cas is smiling — softly, seriously — and Dean’s own stupid grins falls a little flat.

Then Cas leans his head back, closing his eyes as the warm water surrounds his tattered skin.

“This feels nice,” he says. “Thank you, Dean.”

“Don’t mention it.” Dean sits on the closed toilet seat. “Basic human decency, man.”

Cas just hums neutrally, and Dean wonders how much human decency he’s actually encountered in his time on earth. He’s afraid to ask. He watches Cas drag his feet through the water, leaving little ripples in his wake. It’s much more peaceful than the torrents gushing along the ground outside. Dean wishes that he could hold this moment in his hands, this moment where Cas is at ease and safe and loose enough to let Dean near him.

 _“You’re safe now, Cas, I swear_.” Dean blinks, pressing a hand to his forehead. It’s just a stray thought, but... _Cas is looking at him, laying across the bed. Dean’s bed. He looks so wary, so hopeless. “I’m gonna take care of you.”_

“Dean?”

Cas has turned the water back on. That’s the first thing Dean notices, that it’s running again, spilling into the tub and sending eddies whirling over Cas’s feet. He blinks groggily.

“Are you alright?” Cas asks. “You’re rubbing your head again.”

“Yeah, it’s just...” He trails off, unsure what that was. A memory of Cas with him in the bunker? In his bed?

“You can use some of my medicine for your headache,” Cas continues. Dean had forgotten about that, lost track of his own pain while trying to ease Cas’s, but now he thinks maybe some meds and some sleep might be a good idea.

“Okay,” Dean says. “But I can hold off until you’re done here.” He gestures to the tub.

Cas turns the tap back off.

“I can be done now,” he says. “I think they’ve soaked enough.”

Dean suddenly doesn’t have the strength to argue, wishing for a warm bed, despite the fact that it’s early afternoon. Cas turns around, whipping his feet out of the tub and slinging water everywhere. Dean lifts him again, carrying him to the bedroom as Cas’s feet drip across the floor.

He goes through the motions of helping Cas wrap his feet and take his painkillers, mind on that flash of a memory, disturbing in its realism. For a second Dean really felt like he was with Cas in the bunker, and now he can’t get the fear in Cas’s eyes out of his head.

“Dean,” Cas says when Dean roots around in his bag, looking for his cell phone to order them food. “No one will want to deliver in this storm. I’m fine. You should sleep.”

Again, he doesn’t argue, just nods and falls onto his bed facing Cas. Cas looks at him across the gap between their beds, and he’s wearing that concerned frown again, little wrinkles forming between his brows.

“I should have taken care of you,” Dean whispers, exhaustion catching up and sleep closing in.

He doesn’t hear Cas’s reply.


	18. Demons

Sam’s tried to call Dean’s cell at least ten times in the past six hours, and Dean just isn’t answering.

“Where the fuck are you?” he asks Dean’s voicemail. “Tell me you’re not dead in a ditch! Call me back, asshole!”

When he hangs up, Eileen is looking at him with her eyebrows raised.

 _“I’m sure they’re okay,”_ she signs, because now she has to be the calm one. Sam is kind of losing it. “Dean’s trying to draw the danger away from you. It’s a standard Winchester play.”

She’s probably right. It’s such a Dean move to decide that Sam can’t join the fight, to take Cas and run straight into the mouth of the threat. But if his intention was to draw Cas’s pursuers away from Sam, he doesn’t think it’s working. The storm outside hasn’t abated at all. If anything, it looks worse.

Eileen got the backup generator going a few hours ago, so they at least have lights now — not that it’s much help if they need to go outside. It’s late afternoon and the sky is pitch black, covered in rolling, dark clouds.

“What could it be?” Eileen asks. “This can’t be one demon.”

Sam’s been thinking the same thing. Demons in mass do cause blackout clouds, but not storms like this. And he hasn’t seen so many demons in one place since a massive group of them got blasted to shreds by Amara. Crowley’s last stand.

Sam wonders if Cas was there, too, that day they faced the goddess. Sam wonders if he stood with the angels, in the one time he can ever remember them fighting on humanity’s side.

“Do you know of any gods that control weather?” Sam asks Eileen. “Native American, maybe?” But he doesn’t actually think this is a god. He doesn’t think it’s a demon, either, or a monster, or an angel. He has no idea what they’re dealing with.

There’s something familiar about this storm, though — the way it sprang up so suddenly, the way it’s building and building, stretching from Nebraska down into Kansas, the way it seems to hover in place over the Midwest. Sam feels like he saw something like this once, years ago, on a smaller scale, but he’s not sure if he’s forgetting something or if this is just deja vu.

 _“I’ll look it up,”_ Eileen signs in response to his earlier question, and she goes to grab her phone.

Sam sits at the counter staring at his own phone while Eileen starts researching. No missed calls or texts from Dean. His thumb hovers over his brother’s number, and Sam’s so tempted to call again. He decides against it.

“Hey,” Eileen says, and he turns to her. “I decided to look up severe, unexplained weather first, and Sam —” She sets her phone down in front of him. “— you need to look at this.”

It’s a news article by a Lincoln paper from May of 2016. “Massive storm cell over Nebraska dissipates after 3 days of rain,” the headline says. Sam scrolls through the article, reading about how this thunderstorm emerged in the middle of a high pressure front, causing flash floods and fires from lightning strikes over a three-day period. And then it just stopped.

Sam closes his eyes, thinking back. Three years ago, right before he finally got the balls to call Eileen and ask her out, right after God and Amara fought it and out and decided to leave the planet together — what were he and Dean hunting then?

“Look!” Eileen taps the bottom of the screen, where there are links to other stories the paper ran at the same time. She’s pointing to a link that says, “Police won’t say serial killer caused burn victims’ deaths.” Sam pulls it up.

“Nebraska FBI and local police say they’re not ready to call the recent string of deaths by fire the work of a serial killer,” Sam reads aloud. “Seven people in the state, from Lincoln to North Platte, have gone missing in the past week, only to be found burned alive. Yet the head of the NFBI, Greg Sanders, says, ‘At this time we have no evidence relating the victims to one another besides cause of death. Some of these victims appear to have been killed only minutes apart, which to me rules out a serial killer.’”

Sam quickly scans the rest of the article.

“The first victims were the Waters family in Lincoln — Emily, 47, Jake, 17, and Lindy, 14. They were believed to have been burned alive by their husband and father, Robert Waters, 49. But Robert Waters was found two days after his family, body burned in a field north of Seward. Henry Gable, 34, of Seward; Amanda Vincent, 28, of Grand Island; and Raven Clark, 41, of Kearney were also found burned to death the day after Robert Waters’ body was discovered.” Sam rubs a hand across his mouth and mutters, “ _Holy fuck”_ before he continues reading, Eileen watching him closely. “The family members of Seth Harkins, a student at the University of Nebraska who went missing from North Platte the day the last bodies were found, are begging police to acknowledge a serial killer is involved and may have their son.”

And on the screen is a picture of Seth Harkins, a 20-something blond with a wide grin, wearing a University of Nebraska sweater at a football game. Healthy, happy — still incredibly familiar.

“Holy fuck!” Sam yells, and Eileen starts hitting his arm frantically. “Do you see that?”

“Yes, _yes_!” She’s signing and yelling.

“That’s Seth Lucas!” Sam scrolls back to the top of the page to see the article date. Written right after the storm cleared. He types “Seth Harkins Nebraska” into the search bar. Page after page comes up, all dedicated to finding the college senior who suddenly walked out of a bar and never came back. The case is open, and there have been several sightings, none confirmed. Every picture Sam sees confirms what he already knows, but Harkins’ parents’ website settles any doubt — “Help us find our son!” the website header screams in bold font. “Seth Lucas Harkins, missing since 05/21/16.”

Eileen and Sam look at each other.

“He’s still alive,” Sam says, and Eileen says, “Do you think he’s not human anymore?”

Sam shakes his head, which is aching, again, and Dean took all the pain meds in Cas’s room. Sam really doesn’t want to raid Andrew’s room to find more.

 _“I don’t know,”_ he signs. “If he’s not, then I don’t know what he is. Angels don’t roast their vessels to crisps like that, and demons don’t either.”

 _“Do gods need vessels?”_ she asks, and Sam shrugs again. Chuck and Amara walked around in human skin, but he’s not sure how that worked. Amara grew her vessel from a child to an adult in a matter of weeks, and Chuck... who knows.

Sam picks up his phone to call Dean again. Straight to voicemail.

“Dean, please — Eileen found something _big_ about this storm and about Seth, and I need to talk to you ASAP. Call me. _Please_.”

He hangs up, pressing the edge of the phone to his lips. Eileen rubs his back.

“We need to find them,” he says. “If they left to confront Seth or some other stupid, macho shit like that then they have no idea what they’re dealing with.”

“Neither do we,” Eileen points out.

“Well, we still know more than they do.” He looks outside again. No one should be driving in this, especially not without a set destination in mind. Sam can feel his own frustration, at his brother and at the situation, building rapidly. He needs to know where Dean is, needs to know he’s okay and not doing anything dumb. The latter is unlikely to be the case.

Suddenly there’s a loud _BOOM_ directly above their heads, like another bolt of lightning struck the house, but this time the electricity stays on. Sam jumps, and Eileen says, “What?” Before he can answer, all of the back windows blow out.

Sam clings to Eileen as they drop to the floor behind the kitchen counter, glass shattering around them. Without the buffer of the windows the wind is loud and violent, rushing into the house, scattering papers and banging the pots and pans hanging above the counter together. Eileen pushes Sam back just as one crashes right where his head had been.

Rain is pelting into the house, and Sam can see that the recently-painted wards on the wall and floors are starting to drip.

He can barely hear anything over the roar of the storm, but luckily his wife taught him sign language. He quickly signs to her, communicating a route out of the kitchen and toward their guns, just in case. She nods, on board. The two of them scoot back on their hands and asses before standing and rushing out of the kitchen entry that leads into the living room.

“I don’t think so,” says a voice, impossibly coming in over the storm, and Sam turns his head toward the open back windows just in time to be yet again violently thrown into the foyer wall. Eileen lands next to him with an _umph_ of pain.

Three people — two women and one man — stand in the living room, unbothered by the wind and rain at their backs or the glass at their feet. They all have black eyes. _More demons._ Just what they need.

“Where’s the angel?” says the first voice, which belongs to the shortest demon, a red-headed woman. “This is the only warded house for miles. We know you’re keeping him here.”

“He’s not here,” Sam says, straining against the invisible hold. “He left this morning. Ran away, actually.”

The male demon laughs. “Ran away? Sounds like Castiel.”

“Shut up, Ivan,” snaps the last demon to speak, a brunette woman with a thick scar running along her forearm. “We’re not here to quip. Where’s the other Winchester?”

Sam grits his teeth. “On a milk run.”

The demon with the scar raises an eyebrow and turns to the redhead. “Ronnie?” she says, and the redhead smiles and says, “With pleasure.” She lifts a fist and twists, causing Eileen to cry out in agony.

“Hey!” Sam shouts, bucking against the wall in a desperate effort to get free. “We don’t know where they are! They didn’t tell us!”

The demon leader steps forward, leaning her head to the side in a way that seems totally unlike Cas’s curious head tilt. She waves a hand, and Ronnie lets up the pressure she’d been holding on Eileen, who gasps in relief.

“This is interesting,” the demon with the scar says. “He didn’t ever say much about the wife. What I want to know is will you pick her over your brother, Sam? If I tell you I’ll kill her if you don’t give me Dean’s location, will you let her die?”

“Who’s _he_?” Eileen asks through gritted teeth, clearly looking for a distraction. “Seth?”

The demons don’t say anything, but the looks they exchange reveal enough.

“Why would demons serve a human?” The weight on Sam’s chest isn’t letting up, and the words come out slightly breathless. “What do you have to gain from that kind of partnership?”

The lead demon smiles beatifically.

“Oh, he’s so much more than you know,” she says. “And he wants you alive, Sam. You and the angel and your brother. But I’ve got no rules on this one.” She points a red-painted fingernail at Eileen. “So you need to fess up fast, or I’ll let the others here get to work.”

Sam can see his bag of weapons just in the doorway to their bedroom, but it’s too far away, and the demons aren’t loosening their hold. They broke the first line of wards busting out the windows, but if he can just get them to walk a little further into the house they might fall under one of the devil’s traps Dean painted on the ceilings.

“I honestly don’t know where Dean is,” he says. “Pick up my phone.” He jerks his head toward the direction of the kitchen, where it still sits on the counter, right under one of those traps. “I’ve been calling and texting him all day.”

The demon with the scar snaps, “Ivan, go get the phone.” Ivan rolls his eyes behind her back but heads off toward the kitchen. Sam can’t see him from his pinned position, but he hears the snarl of frustration when Ivan hits the trap. That’s one down.

Unfortunately Sam’s plan didn’t really extend further than this brief second of distraction. Ronnie twists her fist again, and now Sam feels like his gut is burning inside him. He groans.

"Don’t try that again,” the leader says. “And don’t you dare try it on me.”

She’s moving forward now, and Sam feels a flicker of relief over the pain. She’s so close to the trap set at the edge of the living room. If they just have to take out the last one Sam feels a lot better about their odds.

Before the demon can reach the trap light floods the room, so blindingly bright Sam and Eileen have to close their eyes. It can’t be lightning because it lasts much longer, a continuous blaze that Sam can see through his closed eyelids. Over the howling wind he thinks he hears the demons scream.

Then it's over as quickly as it began. Sam and Eileen slide to the floor, falling in a tangled heap. They open their eyes cautiously. Another stranger, a middle-aged man with dark hair, stands in the center of the living room. The demons in the female vessels are dead at his feet, their eyes burned out.

 _Angel._ Sam’s gut reaction is fear. He reaches out for Eileen with one hand, and she grips it tight.

The angel smiles.

“Sam Winchester,” he says, calm and collected, as if the dead bodies lying before him and the storm raging behind him are of no consequence. “It’s been a very long time.”


	19. Like Always

It’s not like Dean typically runs on your standard eight hours of sleep, but having Cas around is killing his sleep cycle regardless. Dean spent half the night unable to rest due to a combination of the storm and Cas’s even breathing. He went to bed around 9 p.m. with no thought to how much his presence disturbs Dean, simply rolling over and saying a quiet “Goodnight, Dean.”

Dean watched Cas’s chest rise and fall in the light of the lamp between their beds, wishing like crazy he could just cross the space between them, slide in the bed behind Cas, kiss his neck.

 _Did we ever do that?_ he wants to ask in the morning when Cas smiles sleepily at him, before he remembers himself and the distance he’s holding Dean at. _Did I ever kiss you? Did I tell you that you drive me crazy? I must have._

They get ready in silence, Dean helping Cas pull on his sweats so his feet don’t have to touch the floor. They don’t talk about it, this tension between them that Dean is sure Cas feels, too — but then again, they don’t talk about much anyway. Cas offered up some big events in their past the other night, but now it’s the smaller stuff that Dean is dying to know, like if he ever held Cas’s hand the way he wants to right now.

The power in the motel goes out just as Dean is brushing his teeth, and he rolls his eyes. The storm should have passed by them now, but he’s not sitting around here for another day. He can feel that tug again, the need to keep moving.

“Cas?” he says, stepping back into the bedroom. “Hey, this is gonna sound weird, but uh, I think... I think we need to keep going west... uh, toward The Bend?”

Cas slowly turns on the bed to face him, and Dean braces himself for an argument. But Cas just looks at him, considering.

“Why do you feel that way, Dean?” he asks, and Dean almost laughs because Cas sounds like a fucking therapist sometimes. _You were stupid for the right reasons._ He rubs his temple.

“Uh, I don’t know,” he confesses. “It’s kind of like with the praying thing, I guess? I just have this sense that something wants me to find it. I think it’s your grace?” His words tilt up into a question. Dean’s fully aware how crazy he sounds. If Sam were here he would be ranting about never walking straight into enemy territory.

Cas gestures for him to come closer to his bed. Dean walks over obediently, taken off guard when Cas abruptly tugs him down by his left arm. He shoves a hand under Dean’s t-shirt, pressing it against the skin of Dean’s left shoulder.

“Hey!” Dean feebly protests, but Cas shushes him. His gaze goes unfocused as he feels around Dean’s shoulder, and Dean watches, fascinated and also kind of concerned. Most people he finds attractive don’t tend to grope him on the deltoid. He wonders offhandedly if this is some sort of freaky angelic foreplay.

After a few seconds Cas’s eyes go almost comically wide, and he pulls his hand away like he’s been burned.

“Uh, Cas?”

“Dean.” Cas’s eyes refocus, this time looking at Dean’s face. “Dean, you — You still have some of my grace in you.”

Well, now that just sounds kinky. Dean blinks at him in confusion. Cas bounces a little on the bed and taps Dean’s shoulder again.

“When I pulled you out of Hell, I had to leave you with some of my grace to repair your soul. It manifested in a scar on your shoulder which I later healed.” Dean rubs at that shoulder. “I should have thought of this sooner,” Cas continues. “Obviously there would still be some left. It’s bound to you, forever. It’s probably been calling out to me all this time, and that’s why you’ve still been praying to me. Now that the grace left in me is as good as gone, it wants to reunite with the other remnants.”

“Okay,” Dean says slowly, trying to process the fact that grace is apparently somewhat sentient, and thus he’s had a living piece of Cas inside him (in a decidedly non-sexy way) for more than a decade. “So, it’s like magnetic filings?”

The corners of Cas’s lips quirk up.

“Sort of, yes,” he says. “Grace likes to gather together with its source.” He frowns then, and Dean immediately wishes that miniscule smile was back. “Which makes it more odd that I could only seem to trace fragments of it, fragments that didn’t try to return to me.”

Dean doesn’t know how to respond to that. The mechanics of angelic grace are beyond him, so he’s not sure how to comfort Cas here. He decides to try anyway, tentatively resting hand on Cas’s knee.

“Well, you’re warded, right? That tattoo on your hip? Maybe it just couldn’t find you.”

Cas keeps frowning.

“Yeah, maybe.”

Dean, taking the fact that Cas hasn’t moved away from him yet as encouragement, moves to sit on the bed next to him.

“So I’ve got a honing beacon for your grace,” he says. “We should use that to our advantage. Now, if it's at The Bend Seth might have found some way to harness it, but you can call it to you, right?”

Cas lips pull into a thin line as he thinks.

“Theoretically, yes, it should come to me above all others. But it’s been lost for so long...”

“Hey.” Dean taps Cas’s knee with one finger. “If it knows me, it’s gonna know you, Cas. You don’t have to worry. We’re gonna find it, it’s gonna come back to you, and we’re gonna kick Seth’s ass.”

///

“Do we have a plan for this ass-kicking?” Cas asks an hour later, sitting with his legs hanging out of the open door of the passenger’s seat, watching Dean pump gas. The rain thankfully let up right around the time they left the motel, and now the sky is almost entirely clear. The storm dissolved as fast as it emerged. Dean knows he should be suspicious, but he’s taking all the good he can get right now, and that good includes the sun shining behind Cas as he stares at the wrapped sandwich Dean bought him inside the gas station.

“Dude, you eat that.” Dean points at the sandwich, and Cas glares at him. Dean smiles at Cas’s grumpy expression, but his face falls once he remembers the question. “And uh, no. Not really. Try to sneak in? At least we’re not in my Impala, I guess. She’s a beauty, but she’s loud.” He feels immediately guilty for saying that, and sends out a silent _sorry, Baby, I still love you best_ in case she’s listening from her lonely spot in an empty Kansas parking lot.

Cas smiles slightly, looking off at nothing in particular. Remembering.

“I do miss her,” he says, fondness in his voice. “She always took good care of you and Sam.”

Dean swallows hard. _Gorgeous, tough, stubborn, kind, digs my car._ Cas is checking off all the boxes on Dean’s My Type of Guy list.

“I have a similar vehicle,” Cas continues. His voice drops a little. “A Continental. It’s still at The Bend.”

Dean remembers that ugly gold boat of a sedan parked out in front of the farmhouse, thinks that somehow it fits Cas perfectly — the human angel in the larger-than-life car.

“We’ll get it, too,” he says with surety. “No good Lincoln gets left behind. Besides, Baby could use a friend. This thing —” Dean taps the side of Sam’s Volvo. “— is a real piece of shit.”

It’s only after he’s finished talking that Dean remembers Cas is going back home, wherever home is for him now, and Dean’s going back to Kansas. Alone.

Cas doesn’t say anything in response to Dean’s blunder, looking at the ground by his socked feet with sudden interest. Dean knows he should probably clear the air, apologize, stop treating Cas like he and Dean are still friends when that’s not something Cas wants anymore. But he can’t force the words out of his throat.

“Thank you,” Cas says quietly, and Dean thinks he might have misheard, but then Cas looks up at him. “For doing all of this for me. For taking… taking care of me.” His voice seems to catch on “taking,” but he quickly clears his throat and looks down again.

Dean looks at Cas’s profile, studying him in the silence. It hurts him, that halted sentence, the soft “thank you,” hurts him in the same place it hurt every time he watched his little brother get excited when he got to do normal kid stuff like take field trips to the library and ride a bike through puddles. Cas treats kindness like a rarity, and it breaks Dean’s heart.

“Cas, I — You don’t have to thank me. It’s not like I could have left you there with them, with Seth. You don’t have to thank people for doing what they should do.”

“Nonetheless,” Cas says, “you and the others likely saved my life. If they had come back...” He shudders, and Dean tenses at the thought. “I don’t know what they would have done.”

 _Killed you_ , Dean thinks. _Seth would have killed you_. _For fun._

And now they’re headed back there, with no plan, just a couple of weapons — the demon knife, the gun Dean always carries on him. And he knows that he can’t take Cas back to The Bend like this, still healing and his grace run out. That’s not a risk he’s willing to take.

He ponders his reckless rush into the storm, the way it still feels like there’s a hook in his chest, lightly tugging at him, taking him to the lost pieces of Cas’s grace. Dean has to keep going — he doesn’t know why, but it’s the same sense of urgency that drove him to pray to Cas for all those years. He knows he’ll need Cas to handle the grace once they find it, but he doesn’t want Cas to go with him under any illusion that Dean will be able to keep them both safe once they’re up against Seth’s army.

“Cas,” he says. “Maybe I should go to The Bend alone first — just to scope things out, find out how many people we’ll be dealing with.” Dean absently pulls at his fingers, popping his knuckles and avoiding Cas’s gaze. “This whole ‘no plan, no worries’ thing doesn’t usually work out for me, and I don’t want you getting caught in the crossfire and getting hurt.”

He looks at Cas, who tilts his head in confusion.

“Dean, I’m already hurt.” He gestures to himself. “And you won’t be able to touch my grace. You need me there.”

“But you’re —”

“Coming with you,” Cas interrupts. “Like always, Dean.”

 _Like always_. And ain’t that a kick in the nuts, because there is no “like always” to Dean, only the past few weeks full of stilted conversations and overwhelming feelings he can’t possibly understand without context. Cas has years of experiences with Dean, and Dean deprived himself of all of that, for reasons he can’t begin to recall or comprehend.

But he doesn’t want to break this spell where Cas treats him like the Dean he knew, not the Dean who forgot him and spent three years barely holding on to his sanity. So Dean just says, “Yeah, okay. But we hang back until we can think of some kind of plan, alright? No kamikaze missions.”

Cas actually kind of smiles.

“Hypocrite,” he says, and there’s that fondness again. Dean doesn’t understand it, but laps it up eagerly regardless. “But alright. Let’s do this.”


	20. Rita

Dean eventually turns his phone off so he won’t have to keep ignoring Sam’s calls, pointedly not responding to Cas’s reprimand of “Dean...” He’s already dragged Cas back into the fray, the least he can do is keep Sam and Eileen out of it. So he didn’t listen to any of Sam’s voicemails, though he did shoot his brother a quick text at Cas’s urging to let him know “yes, we’re alive.”

The highway is choked with traffic — people who were trapped in their homes during the storm are rushing out to get more groceries or to check on loved ones they haven’t been able to reach due to electrical outages. Dean loses track of the number of cars he sees wrecked on the side of the road, covered in mud, and the number of ambulances and cop cars that pass them by, lights and sirens on as they head to the next emergency. Nebraska is a Great Plains state, and there’s nowhere for the rain of the past few days to drain to. The interstate is elevated enough to be all right, but homes and towns in lower-lying areas flooded.

“What do you think caused it?” he asks Cas, who’s staring out the window at the fields they’re passing through, eyes on the cattle slowly making their way through the muck and the mud.

“Something powerful,” Cas says. He sounds unsettled, and Dean doesn’t push further. He’s freaking out a little, too, seeing the damage left behind by the storm. It feels familiar, in a way not unlike Cas does, except Cas is good. Whatever did this — whatever swept away the roots of the crops and covered the foundations of homes in water and burned the land with lightning strikes — is bad.

When they pull off the highway and onto the county road that leads to The Bend, Dean feels it again — that insistent tug at his chest, pulling at his heart. It’s slightly stronger now. He thinks Cas’s grace must be near, but he doesn’t say that aloud. Cas is still staring out the window. His hands are shaking in his lap.

Dean pulls over when they’re still about two miles out, far enough away from the buildings of The Bend that they won’t be spotted but close enough for him to be able to walk there. There’s nowhere to hide the car, but since it’s not the Impala he’s not going to worry too much about it getting recognized.

“Okay,” Dean says, putting the Volvo into park. “We can’t just drive in, guns blazing, because we’ve only got one gun. We can’t sneak in because you can’t walk that far, and we can’t just waltz up because they’ll kill us both.” He sighs. This really seemed like a good idea — no, never a _good_ idea, just the _only_ idea — when they were still relatively safe at Andrew’s house. “So Cas, I gotta ask — how can we get it to come to you? And how far away can we be for this work?”

Cas’s hands are still shaking. Dean can’t help but look at them, and when Cas sees him staring, he quickly folds them together, clasping his fingers tightly to still the tremors.

“I don’t know,” he says. He’s looking down. “I had some ideas — Enochian spells, mainly — written in my notebook but...” Cas trails off.

“They have it,” Dean finishes for him. He runs a hand through his hair, frustrated. “They’ve got everything.”

“It should be impossible,” Cas says. “Humans shouldn’t be able to read my notes, let alone understand them enough to be able to harness angelic grace without the assistance of one of the host.”

Dean taps his fingers on the dashboard.

“Well, maybe they’ve got angelic assistance. We don’t know.”

Cas scrunches his brow.

“Unlikely,” he says. “I didn’t recognize any of my brothers or sisters among their member. It takes a great deal of power to disguise oneself from other angels, and…” He sighs. “And all of the hunters... Well, they were very clear about their distaste for my kind.”

 _Right,_ Dean thinks, _because they tortured you. And I brought you back here. Like an asshole._

He hates himself for the question on the tip of his tongue, but it has to be asked.

“Cas, did they say anything while they were torturing you?” Cas’s hands start shaking again. Dean barely manages to stop himself from reaching out to him. “Anything about what they had to gain from hurting you?”

Cas stays quiet for a while, eyes straight ahead, staring blankly. Dean knows all too well what it means to be tortured — how little you remember coherently, how what you can recall sticks out at you, jagged edges of memories that never go away, that burrow into the rest of your life, carving out little scars with every move you make. He’ll never be rid of Hell, even if the angels — no, not angels, just _Cas_ — remade him, whole and new. Cas will never be rid of the marks Seth left, even once the skin has stitched itself back together and the headaches and nightmares have faded.

“It was just Seth and a woman,” he says finally. “She was tall, and she had a scar here.” He points absently to his arm. “They took turns, but Seth did most of the work. He taunted me, usually just telling me I should ask my father to save me. Then he said that I was getting what I deserved for my crimes.” Cas takes a shuddering breath. “That if you knew what I was, I would already be dead at your hand.”

“Why would he say that?” Dean asks, not wanting to push Cas too much, but struggling to understand. “How did he know which angel you were; how could he know about any of your ‘crimes?’”

Cas half-heartedly shrugs.

“Maybe he knew from the moment I claimed to be James Novak. I’ve yet to meet any humans who’ve heard of me, but if one of the many other angels he’s trapped spoke of me then —”

“Many other angels?”

Cas looks at Dean, eyebrows scrunched together.

“Yes, he told me he’d killed many of my siblings. Did he not brag about this to you?”

“Yeah, but —” Dean shakes his head. Killing angels is something Seth bragged about, something he never let anyone forget, but Dean always assumed it was just another one of his lines, like the stories he told about his vast knowledge of lore and his impressive collection of weapons. Maybe some of it was true, maybe he did actually kill a few angels, but Dean never fully bought the hype.

“Oh.” Cas’s voice sounds so small. “Well... He... Listed them out for me. Their names. How he did it. Abriel, stabbed through the eye with an angel blade. Yeshuim, burned alive with holy fire. Amarkiel, shot with angel blade bullets in all her extremities until her grace completely bled out of her vessel.” Cas speaks in a worrisome monotone, like he’s reciting phone book entries. He looks detached, mind somewhere else, not in the car with Dean. It’s disturbing. “There were many more. They all bled together, the names and the violence committed against them. He told me he had something special planned for my death and for my grace.” Cas finally seems to snap out of his reverie, looking at Dean. “He told me it would involve you.”

Dean breathes out shakily. He wants to touch Cas, to offer him comfort, but in the confined space of the car it seems like a bad idea. There’s nowhere for Cas to go if he rejects Dean. He would feel trapped, which is the last thing Dean wants.

“You’re not gonna die, Cas,” he says instead, voice low, making it a vow. “I’m not gonna hurt you.”

Cas looks back out the window, and Dean knows he doesn’t believe him. He might trust Dean like this, without his memories, without their history, but Dean knows that Cas truly believes Dean is capable of killing him. He saw the complete and utter fear in Cas’s eyes when he first came to back at Andrew’s house.

“Cas, I —”

“Dean,” Cas says insistently, cutting him off. He points at the road. There’s someone running toward them in the distance. “Someone is coming.”

“Fuck,” Dean mutters under his breath. “Alright, you keep your head down, okay?” He pulls his gun out of the glove box, handing Cas a well-worn map at the same time. “If they don’t recognize us, we pretend we got lost. If they do...”

Cas nods solemnly in understanding. Dean turns off the safety and cocks the gun, keeping the muzzle just beneath the window, out of eyesight.

As the figure gets closer, Dean realizes he recognizes her. It’s the woman with the Cajun accent, the one who reluctantly let them in the main house the first day. She sees the car and starts to run straight toward it.

“Fuck,” he mutters again when he catches sight of her face, the crazed look in her eye. His finger twitches on the trigger.

“Dean,” Cas says, wide eyes on the woman, “she wasn’t one of the ones who hurt me, maybe...”

“Help!” the woman all but screams, throwing herself at the hood of the Volvo. Dean and Cas both jump as she hits the car, but she keeps moving, stumbling toward the driver’s door. Dean lifts the gun to the window to make it clear he means business.

“Please! We need to get out of here!” she says, tripping over her words in a rushed panic, eyes darting from Dean’s face to the gun. Now that she’s at the window Dean can see the tears streaking down her face. “Please, take me out of here!”

Cas reaches across Dean to unlock the doors, ignoring Dean’s protest of “Hey!”

The woman wrenches the back door open and collapses onto the seat, slamming the door shut behind her.

“Thank you,” she says, gasping. Cas nods at her, but Dean doesn’t let go of the gun, leaning forward to angle his body between her and Cas, making sure she has a clear sight of the weapon. When she sees it, she stills.

“Wait, wait,” Dean snaps. “I’m gonna need some explanations here.” He turns slightly to look at Cas. “Maybe first you wanna tell me why you’re cool with letting someone who tortured you ride in my car?’

Cas, the little shit, actually rolls his eyes.

“This isn’t your car, it’s your brother’s. And I told you, she —”

“I didn’t hurt him!” the woman insists. Her voice shakes. “I told them they shouldn’t treat him like that, but they said he was an angel.” She looks at Cas with a mix of awe and fear that Dean has to admit is familiar. “They said he would hurt us if had the chance. But they —” She bites her lip, looking outside. “We need to go.”

Cas looks at Dean and raises his eyebrows.

“No,” Dean says. “Not till you tell us what you’re running from.”

She looks back at them, face full of panic again.

“The — the demons,” she says, and takes a shuddering breath. “There were so many of them...” She runs her hands over her face, shaking as she curls her legs up on the seat. “I’ve never seen anything like it. They came, and then the storm followed.”

Cas leans up, once again ignoring Dean in favor of setting a hand on the woman’s knee. She moves her hands from her face and raises her eyes to his.

“We need to leave before they come back,” she says again. “They killed everyone there, anyone who wasn’t a vessel. Everyone except me. You don’t understand, we need to —”

“What’s your name?” Cas interrupts her increasingly wild stream of consciousness. The woman seems taken aback by the question.

“Rita. Rita Boudreaux.”

“Rita,” Cas says with infinite patience, “I need you to take a deep breath, hold it for as long as you can, then let it out again, pushing that same breath out for as long as you can. Can you do that for me?”

Rita nods, then sucks in an exaggerated breath. Dean glares at Cas.

“What?”

Dean gestures to Rita, her cheeks puffed out as she holds in air.

“The enemy, dude. We don’t usually give them calming techniques.”

Cas just shakes his head as Rita lets out the breath with a gasp.

“I’m not the enemy,” she insists when she’s regained a normal breathing pattern. “The demons are the enemy, and they could come back any second now.”

“You’re a hunter,” Dean snaps, unable to turn the other cheek the way Cas can, apparently. “You should know how to deal with demons.”

Rita shakes her head, eyes filling with tears again. She brushes one hand through her dark hair as Cas continues to pat her knee, stubbornly insisting on being kind to a woman who stood by while he was tortured. Dean simultaneously adores him and is also incredibly frustrated with his total lack of self-preservation. He wonders if this is what he felt for Cas before, then sets that thought aside as Rita starts talking.

“I do,” she says, “but I’m telling you, I’ve never seen so many in one place. It was like almost every person at The Bend had black eyes. There were at least forty of them, and maybe fifteen, twenty of us unpossessed.” She closes her eyes. “I don’t know how they got through the wards.” She opens her eyes again, looking at Dean with surprising fierceness given her earlier panic. “Some of them were my friends, and I know they had anti-possession tattoos. But they took over their bodies anyway — or maybe they were demons all along, I don’t know anymore. Seth and Angela, that’s his right hand and —” Rita glances at Cas. “— the woman with the scar, who helped him hurt you, they called a meeting in the yard. As soon as we were all there, that’s when the ones who’d been possessed turned on us. They killed the hunters, raided the stores, and Seth just watched all of it with this smirk on his face. I managed to get away in the chaos by hiding underneath the front porch. And I — I watched as he gathered the survivors and asked them to say yes to him, and live.”

“Say yes?” Dean interrupts, leaning forward. He looks over at Cas, whose expression of understanding and fear mirrors his own. “Say yes to what?”

Rita bites her lip and looks out the window.

“I don’t know,” she says quietly, voice shaking. “There was this bright light, and I had to close my eyes. Then the rain started and the lightning was everywhere, and when I opened my eyes again — they were all gone. All the demons, just vanished. But I waited, waited for _hours_ , all through the night, until the water rose too high for me to stay hidden. When I crawled out, finally, I saw that...” She shakes her head again, rubbing at her eyes as if to erase the sight. “The bodies of all the survivors in the yard had been incinerated. Including Seth’s.”

“How do you know it was his?” Cas asks, urgent.

Rita reaches into her jacket pocket and pulls something out — a thin metal cord with a glass vial hanging from it, glowing unnaturally blue. Cas’s eyes widen, and he reaches out and takes it from her, cradling it in his hands. Dean’s heart throbs in his chest, and he knows, _he_ _knows_ , what it is.

“He always wore that,” Rita says. “I don’t think he ever wanted anyone to see it, though. He kept it under his shirt usually.”

“Cas...” Dean starts, but he doesn’t know what to say.

“This isn’t all of it.” Cas clenches his fist around the vial of grace. “There should be more. This...”

“We need to go look, okay?” Dean moves his hands to Cas’s shoulders, careful to only touch him where he’s sure there aren’t any cuts. “We need to check this out for ourselves. Maybe the rest of it is here somewhere.”

Rita scrambles up in the back seat, leaning forward.

“No,” she insists. “I hid here for _days_ , waiting out the storm. But now that it’s gone, I know they’re coming back. Whatever they wanted, they’ve got it now, and this place has more information on the supernatural than anywhere else.” She glares at Dean. “So they’re not just gonna leave it sitting here. They’re coming back, and I’m not going to be here when they do.”

She gets out of the car, slamming the door forcefully, then takes off at a run, headed toward the highway. Dean hesitates, unsure whether they should follow her or go to The Bend, but one look at Cas, holding the vial with tears starting to form in his eyes, and Dean’s mind is made up.

He throws the Volvo into drive.

“Come on,” he says. “Let’s go find the rest.”


	21. Real Threat

The bodies are exactly where Rita said they would be, in the yard between the farmhouse and the bunkhouse, and Dean finds himself wishing she had been lying. Half are scattered, spread out across the yard — the ones who tried to run only to be cut down by the demons, heads twisted into unnatural angles on their necks, throats and stomachs slit open by blades. The constant rain muddied their clothes and faces, and the bodies have the bloated look and smell caused by days spent out in the open. Dean’s pretty used to death (hell, he’s met _the_ Death), but his stomach still churns just looking at them. He glances back at Cas, who’s sitting with his legs hanging out of the open door of the parked car, still clutching his grace and surveying the scene with wide eyes.

Dean cautiously walks across the open area, his boots squelching in the muddy grass, avoiding the sprawled-out forms of the demons’ first victims as he approaches the center of the yard. And there are the rest of the bodies, eight all lined up, charred beyond any form of recognition. Their limbs are distorted and twisted into long, black lumps like clumped charcoal, frozen in fire at the moment of their undoubtedly gruesome deaths. At the top of the line, lying above the rest of the bodies, is what must have been Seth Lucas.

 _He asked them to say yes to him._ Angels need permission for possession, but they don’t do _this_. If a vessel isn’t fit for them their eyes will burn out of their sockets, or maybe that person might explode, but this — it’s like every person in this line was dropped straight into the pits of Hell, and yet nothing around them is burnt.

Dean walks up to the body Rita is so sure belonged to Seth and stares down at it.

“What _were_ you?” he asks, not expecting an answer and not getting one.

“Dean...”

He turns to see Cas walking toward him, wincing with every step as his mangled feet carefully pick their way across the yard.

“Jesus, Cas, I told you to stay in the car!” Dean rushes over to help him anyway, grimacing at the mud caking his socks as he throws Cas’s arm over his shoulder. “You’re gonna get sepsis or something.”

“I’m fine, Dean,” Cas mutters irritably, but the way he leans heavily against Dean’s side implies he’s just the opposite. “I need to see the bodies.”

Dean rolls his eyes but relents, gripping Cas as tight as he dares to and shouldering his weight as they walk slowly back over to the line of burnt corpses. Dean brings them to a stop in front of Seth’s body, and Cas stares down at it.

“This is —” He starts, then shakes his head.

“A nightmare?” Dean offers, subconsciously tightening his grip on Cas, who seems to be shaking slightly again due to fear of being back at this place, fear that’s not extinguished by sight of the immolated body in front of them.

“I was thinking angel,” Cas says quietly. He leans more heavily against Dean, who tries not to read too much into the easy way Cas trusts him with his weight. “But —”

“Angels don’t burn people up like this,” Dean finishes for him. “I had the same thought.”

“He had part of my grace.” Cas opens his palm, and the vial rolls in his hand. “Only an angel should be able to harness it. Or a god of some sort, but I don’t know how many of them survived the apocalypse.”

Dean shudders. Dealing with angels is one thing. Dealing with gods is a whole other ballgame. Every time he and Sam faced any gods, they’d needed help from similarly powerful beings to survive the encounter. Three hunters and a broken angel won’t cut it against whatever this thing is. Commanding demons, igniting nine bodies simultaneously, starting a statewide thunderstorm — this is big, and so far beyond them.

There’s something nagging at the back of Dean’s mind, something telling him to pay attention, that he’s seen this before but he can’t remember when. It’s like different parts of his brain have been walled up and painted over, and Dean’s not at home in his own mind anymore. It’s discomforting to say the least.

“Are you going to use it?” Dean asks, trying not to think too hard about how much of his life he wrote over when he forgot Cas. He points at the vial with his free hand.

“Not yet,” Cas says, and he closes his fist again, then shoves the vial into his jean pocket. “It’s not enough to do much good, and I still have to fix the sigils.” He waves a hand toward his chest. Dean grimaces. He’d forgotten about the scars keeping Cas’s grace from settling in his body. “We need to find the rest of it. Do you still feel anything? Any pull?”

“Not really.”

It’s true. That drive pulling him toward The Bend stopped once Rita unveiled Cas’s grace in the car. Wherever the rest of it is, it’s not here. It’s almost a relief, really. Dean promised Cas he’d help him find his grace, yes, but he’s also perfectly aware that once Cas has it all he’ll leave for good. Selfishly, Dean’s glad for a little more time with him.

Then Cas presses his lips together, eyes watery and tired, and Dean feels instantly ashamed of himself. Cas has been hunted like an animal, and here Dean is feeling glad they haven’t found the one thing that can protect him, just because he wants Cas to stay. He’s an asshole.

“Hey,” Dean says quietly, and Cas turns to him. “We can still check the house and the outbuildings if you want. Maybe I’ll start feeling it again soon.”

Cas just nods in silent agreement.

“Okay, but you gotta get out of the dirt with your feet like that, man.” Dean looks pointedly at Cas’s muddy socks. “So either let me carry you or sit on the porch or something.”

“I don’t need you to carry me,” Cas says stiffly. “Just help me to the house, Dean.”

Though he wants to bend down and scoop Cas back up in his arms, Dean knows that would be pushing Cas’s waning patience. So he helps him walk to the farmhouse, careful to avoid the worst of the puddles and the mud, still wary about the amount of bacteria that has to be accumulating over Cas’s torn feet. He’s gonna make Cas let him change those bandages as soon as they get the hell out of here.

Even though Dean knows Cas won’t be satisfied until they’ve searched all of The Bend, he’s starting to feel a little spooked. The remnants of the massacre spread out over the yard and the fact that they have no idea what was possessing Seth and thus have no idea what they’re dealing with leaves him uneasy. He understands now why Rita ran as soon as she felt it was safe to do so.

They cross the front porch of the farmhouse, Cas limping so heavily he doesn’t even protest when Dean says, “Enough,” and deposits him on the floor inside the doorway, then hands Cas his gun.

“Look everywhere,” Cas calls out as Dean walks down the hall, and Dean throws up a thumbs up behind his back. He eases the demon blade out of his belt loop and starts kicking open doors with little caution, fairly certain they’re alone. There’s nothing in any of the rooms. The furniture is there, yeah, but any signs of current inhabitants — clothes, weapons, lore books — are gone. The demons gutted the place — first the hunters, then their supplies.

But Dean keeps looking. Entering the room where he found Cas is difficult, and he tries to keep his eyes away from the massive bloodstain in the center of the floor. When he pushes open the closet door it’s like he can see Cas there for a second, broken and bleeding out on the ground. Dean closes his eyes and counts to ten to get together. When he opens them, there’s nothing there except more dried blood.

He clears the rooms on the first floor, nodding to Cas as he passes him to bound up the stairs. There’s nothing in any of the second floor rooms, either, except a pocket knife too dull to be of any use. He picks it up anyway, then makes his way back downstairs.

Cas is waiting for him, leaning against the wall by the front door. He raises his eyebrows in question, and Dean shakes his head.

“Nothing.” He hates the way Cas’s face falls. “I’m sorry.”

After a moment of tense silence, Cas says, “There’s a basement.”

Dean looks around the room, not spotting any door to stairs he might have missed.

“Where?”

“I heard Seth mention it. It’s where they kept the things they used to torture me,” Cas says, voice low, like he’s afraid of being overheard, and _damn it_ , his hands are shaking again. Dean shouldn’t have brought him here. “I think the entry is outside.”

“Okay.” Dean sighs. He’s not taking Cas into any room filled with torture instruments. “I’ll be right back.”

He exits the house, bounding down the front porch and avoiding looking at the bodies scattered across the yard. The basement entry is easy to find — this is a classic Midwest, early 1900s farmhouse with a root cellar built underneath, door hatch at the side of the house. There’s a lock on it, but luckily whoever was supposed to close it last didn’t lock it fully. Dean tugs and it swings right open. He shines his phone’s flashlight down into the cellar, noting the rickety wooden stairs that criss-cross their way into the darkness. Dean blows out a breath.

“Fucking hate cellars,” he mutters, but starts down anyway.

There’s a light switch at the bottom of the stairs, and when he hits it, it takes a second for his eyes to adjust to the sudden brightness of the fluorescents that buzz to life. Blinking, Dean slowly removes his hands from over his eyes, and his mouth falls slightly open as he gets his first glimpse of the room.

Angel blades. Hundreds of them. They line the walls, shined and tucked into glass cases, each and every one labeled in Enochian.

Dean’s heart pounds uneasily in his chest as he steps further into the cellar, demon blade drawn. Not that it would do any good — no living demon Dean has ever heard of could have killed this many angels. No demon would have been able to take their blades, would have so brazenly kept them on display.

He’s so absorbed in staring at the gleaming silver lining the walls that he nearly runs into a table set in the center of the room. When Dean looks down he sees the dome Seth used on Cas, and his blood boils in his veins. Without thinking, Dean shoves the putrid contraption onto the floor, where it bounces and rolls to a stop with a loud clatter.

It’s then that Dean sees the case that was sitting behind the dome on the table. It’s different from the others, singular and special, clearly — a wooden box lined in plush velvet with an indentation in the center in the perfect shape of an angel blade. There’s also another, smaller indentation, though Dean can’t guess what that’s for. The glass lid to the case is open, and Dean presses his finger into the velvet unthinkingly. He doesn’t like the way it feels against his skin. His eyes roam over the box, landing on the gold plate at that bottom. There’s a single Enochian word there, just like the ones beneath all the other blades in this morbid showcase. But this word is different, because this word Dean recognizes.

_“Here, Dean.” Cas is smiling. What a rare sight. Dean smiles back. “Like this, see?”_

_Dean takes the pen back, purposefully missing the last letter. Cas rolls his eyes._

_“You are unbelievable,” he says, but it’s fond. “If you keep doing that, you’re going to spell an inappropriate word instead of my name.”_

_Dean grins. This is such a rare moment, for them to have any downtime together when they’re not worried about the end of the world. He’s going to milk it for all it’s worth._

_“Maybe that’s what I’m aiming for,” he says, then writes Cas’s name, perfectly spelled out in his native tongue. And Cas smiles again, looking like the sun itself, and Dean’s ready to burn._

Dean bends over, leaning against the table as his head protests against the resurfacing of a lost memory. It feels for a moment like he’s going to start losing brain tissue through his nose, out his ears. He closes his eyes and the feeling settles, gone as quickly as it came. When he opens them, he stills sees the name spelled out so neatly on the plaque, the box ready for a blade and a vial full of grace belonging to Castiel.

///

Their landing is jarring, and Sam finds himself holding onto Eileen’s hand harder than he maybe should even after Joshua steps away from them, walking steadily toward the farmhouse without a backwards glance.

Eileen looks at Sam and makes the sign for _“dizzy.”_ He nods. Sam knows you never get used to traveling by angel, though he can’t remember the last time he did.

 _“Can we trust him?”_ Eileen asks. Sam shrugs. They didn’t have any time to discuss whether they wanted to go with Joshua after the angel revealed himself at Andrew’s home. He simply reintroduced himself to Sam before sweeping them both to... Sam looks around.

The Bend. They’re at The Bend. And there are bodies everywhere.

“Oh my god,” Eileen whispers, but her voice is drowned out by Dean yelling, “Sam!”

And then Sam sees his brother, standing on the front porch with Cas leaning against him, an angel blade in one hand. His eyes flicker uncertainly from Joshua, who’s standing silently at the bottom of the porch steps, to Sam and Eileen.

Before Sam can say anything, Joshua speaks.

“Castiel.” It’s familiar, but cordial.

Cas shifts under Dean’s arm but doesn’t make any motion to move away.

“Joshua.”

“Cas?” Dean looks between Cas and the other angel, clearly as confused as Sam and Eileen are. “Do we need to fight here, buddy?”

Joshua holds up his hands in a placating gesture.

“I come to ask for your help, brother,” he says softly. “I even rescued these two from the clutches of demons as a sign of goodwill from Heaven.” He glances briefly over his shoulder at Sam and Eileen. Sam reaches for his wife’s hand and tugs her closer to the porch, wanting to be near his brother if this meeting goes south.

“Heaven sent two angels to kill me this week,” Cas snaps.

“Not on my orders, Castiel. Heaven is still splintered into factions. And most of those factions still hate you for your loyalty to the Winchesters. Besides, we all thought you were dead after your — _unpleasant_ time with Lucifer.”

Sam swallows hard. It’s one thing for Cas to tell them he used to be their friend; it’s another to have that fact confirmed by an outside source. He sees the way Dean tightens his grip around Cas’s waist at that, pulling him slightly closer to Dean.

“Well, I’m not dead,” Cas says, “but I’m not willing to do Heaven any favors, either.” He flicks a glance toward Sam and Eileen. “Assuming that I have a choice in this and that you really did bring them here as a gesture of goodwill, not as a way to force my hand.”

Joshua sighs.

“I know the host has hurt you, Castiel,” he says. “But I’m willing to offer you a chance to come home, a chance to be restored to your remaining grace, if you help stand for Heaven one last time.” Cas’s hand curls into a fist at his side, but Joshua doesn’t seem to notice. “I assume it’s beginning to dawn on you, what’s going on here?”

Cas’s eyes move to the angel blade in Dean’s hand, and Dean looks at it as well.

“We found a room full of these,” Dean says. He gestures with the blade to the yard. “And a bunch of burnt bodies. You’re saying you know what did this?”

Everyone turns to Joshua. He grimaces.

“Of course. We’ve had an inkling for years. But I assumed he was trapped here, injured and underpowered, and frankly, it didn’t seem worth our time to get involved again. But now, well... He’s growing stronger, gathering up grace.” Joshua stares at Cas and Cas stares back, wide-eyed. “Yours might be the last he needs to finally get back home.”

And Sam _knows_ , and suddenly it all makes sense.

“Lucifer,” he says, voice shaking. “You’re saying this is Lucifer.”

Joshua nods, and Eileen moves closer to Sam, putting an arm around his waist, but Sam feels frozen. For three years they thought they were safe, thought he was dead. For three years the nightmares stopped, and Sam and Dean — they went on hunts with the devil, they took his phone calls and his cases, they stood right next to him, and they never knew.

“He’s dead,” Eileen says. “You can’t really think he survived going up against the Darkness.”

“You thought Amara killed him,” Joshua says. “We believed the same until we saw his true form, uncontained, weak, hovering over Earth just after that last battle. He couldn’t do us any harm in that state, or so we thought. But now —”

“Now he’s threatening you, so you come to Cas to take him out,” Dean snaps. “Yeah, sounds like angels, all right. Assholes sitting in clouds, letting everyone else do their dirty work. Tell me, _Josh_ , are you really gonna let Cas back upstairs when this is all over? And if you do, are you gonna protect him from the rest of the goon squad, ‘cause they sure as hell don’t want him back.”

Cas closes his eyes, says, “Dean...”

“No, Cas, look at you!” Dean glares pointedly at Cas’s feet, then turns his ire back on Joshua. “Lucifer tortured him, and you’re seriously asking him to go another round?”

“Yes,” Joshua says curtly. “Because Lucifer is out of the cage once again due to Castiel’s actions, which he committed on behalf of the two of you.” Sam starts at that, looking at Cas in confusion. Cas just stares at the ground. “I’m asking him to clean up his mess. In return I will help him find his grace, and yes, I will take him back to Heaven under my protection.”

“What if Cas doesn’t want to go back?” Dean asks, and Sam’s not surprised to hear the note of desperation in his brother’s voice. “Huh? What if he belongs here?” Dean doesn’t need to say _with me_. Everyone hears it regardless.

“Dean,” Cas says again, and this time Dean goes quiet, his jaw working in a way that shows he’s holding back an argument.

Cas turns to Joshua.

“If I agree to go after Lucifer,” he says quietly, “will you restore their memories, should they wish for it, and then take them somewhere safe?”

“Cas —” Dean starts, but Joshua cuts him off.

“Yes,” he says. “The Winchesters will be under my protection as well. You have my word.”

Cas closes his eyes, and Sam can see his throat working around his next words.

“Then yes,” he says. “Heal me, and I’ll do it.”

Dean’s face plummets from angry to despondent, and Sam’s seen that look before. It’s his heart being broken, right in front of them.


	22. Alone

Once again Dean finds himself in a motel room trying not to stare at a half-undressed Cas. It’s a little easier this time, since Dean’s chest aches and his stomach is empty and his head is saying _last night on Earth_ and he’s _pissed._

Joshua healed Cas as a “sign of good faith” before dropping them all off at a motel to get some rest before he comes back tomorrow for Cas — before Cas heads off to face the devil in his almost entirely human body. What Joshua expects Cas to do, he didn’t say, but Dean has feeling Cas has a plan — and not a good one.

And it all just makes him so angry, every bit of this fucked up situation. Dean’s angry that Joshua had the nerve to wave a white flag in Cas’s face after apparently abandoning him for years, he’s angry that Cas is so desperate to belong somewhere that he’ll take on a suicide mission to try to get home, he’s angry that the other angels would rather fight Cas than help him fight Lucifer. And he’s mad as all hell at Lucifer for toying with them, for torturing Cas just for kicks. He’s mad at himself for not recognizing the signs of an archangel much sooner, mad at the non-demon hunters at The Bend for letting their guard down and helping the devil gather enough grace to represent a real threat. He’s even mad at Sam and Eileen, sleeping in the room next door, for not saying enough, not saying, “Cas, don’t do this.”

So Dean has to say it.

“Cas,” he says, and Cas freezes where he stands, toothbrush in hand, clad only in sweatpants, hair still wet from the shower he just took. If he weren’t so angry Dean might laugh at that fact that Cas still considers good dental hygiene important, even in the face of almost certain death. “Cas, you can’t do this.”

Cas looks at his hands, fiddling with the toothbrush, and says, “Dean, I’m the one who let him out of the cage. I’m the one who should put him back in.”

“And how are you gonna do that, huh?” Dean snaps, because he’s never been good at layering his worry over his anger. “We don’t have the rings of the horsemen anymore, the witch who helped us last time is in the wind, and you’re _fucking_ mortal, man, at least practically! What are you gonna do Cas? How do you really see this going down?”

Cas drops down onto the bed, suddenly weary. He runs a hand through his hair, and Dean wants to go to him but he’s well aware that he shouldn’t. That’s not how they were, in the past he still doesn’t recall. He understands enough to know that by now.

“There is a sigil,” Cas says warily, “that if done correctly makes an angel into a veritable bomb. I still have some grace left.” He looks at the vial laying on the bedside table. “If I — If I get close enough, I can take out myself and possibly Lucifer in one fell swoop.”

There’s a wrenching sensation in Dean’s chest, and it’s nothing like the gentle pull of Cas’s grace drawing him to it. No, this is like someone has clawed through his rib cage and latched onto his heart, grabbing it and twisting, hard.

_“I’m afraid I might kill myself,” Cas says, sitting across from him in another motel room, and Dean suddenly realizes that Cas is not okay, and he wants to reach for him, to make him feel something other than guilt, but then Sam comes in..._

Dean stumbles across the room, bypassing his own bed to make his way to Cas’s. Cas makes to stand, concern in his eyes, but Dean reaches the bed before Cas reaches him, sitting down shakily. When he doesn’t feel like he’ll fall apart, Dean says, “You _want_ to die?”

Cas sighs, a deep, heavy thing that seems to settle over them both.

“Dean,” he says, and it’s so soft Dean’s certain he couldn’t hear it if they weren’t so close. “I don’t know... I — Life on Earth has not been easy on me, especially — alone.” Cas reaches down and fists a handful of the bedspread, and Dean watches him search for his next words, almost afraid to breathe in the silence if it might make Cas freeze on him again. “The last three years have been lonely, to put it mildly. I did meet kind humans who gave me work or shelter or food, and I do have a life now...” He chuckles humorlessly. “Well, you’d probably not call cleaning rental homes by day and waiting tables by night a life, but I pay my own bills and my landlady likes me and my regulars are happy to see me and sometimes I hunt...” He trails off. “But I do it all alone, when I used to have a constant stream of voices in my head, talking to me, praising our Father, singing songs. And even when they left me, I still had you.”

Cas pauses, and they look at each other.

“I just want a chance to not be alone anymore,” Cas says. “I don’t truly want to die because I don’t know what happens to me when I do... but I’m not sure I want to live like this anymore, either. So if I come up with a better plan, I’ll take it, and maybe I can go home and at least hear my siblings again, even if they never speak directly to me. But if I can’t, if I have to die, at least I’ll die doing something of worth to the world. At least I’ll die fixing my mistake. And then I won’t feel...” He gestures to himself, hand shaking. “All of this pain. Which would be nice. I don’t think I’m meant for it, the pain. I went millennia without it, and now it just seems so... heavy. And it gets heavier every time I — Every time I think of you getting your memories back and leaving me again.”

“That’s not gonna happen, Cas,” Dean vows, and he reaches out for Cas’s hand without thinking. For once Cas doesn’t pull away. “I already told you, I know I shouldn’t have forgotten you. I’m not gonna walk away again.”

Cas smiles ruefully at Dean, and a few tears leak out of the corners of his eyes.

“It would be nice if you knew what you were talking about,” he says. “But you don’t.”

“Like hell —”

“Dean, I called you.” Cas draws his hand away finally, placing it in his lap, and Dean can only stare at it, wishing he could take it back. “Two years ago, I ran into a demon, and she ran a knife into my side, right here.” Cas points to a scar Dean hadn’t seen before, back when his chest was covered in Lucifer’s sick carvings. This scar is healed, a thick, ugly white line running just above his right hip. “I killed her, but I almost didn’t make it. The hospital called you, because yours was the only number I could think to give them. You didn’t answer.” Dean swallows hard, because he doesn’t remember that call. “I called you, too, when I could. I was desperate. I missed you, and I thought maybe if you heard I was hurt...” Cas looks away, staring at the wall. “I left two messages on your voicemail. You never called back.”

Dean opens his mouth, trying to think of something that could possibly soften that blow, but of course there’s nothing. He and Sam kicked their best friend out into the cold for reasons Cas doesn’t even seem to know, and then Cas called him, wounded and lost, and Dean ignored him.

“I’m so sorry,” he says, “I don’t —”

“Remember,” Cas finishes. “I know. You don’t remember me; Sam doesn’t either. I’ve never met Eileen until now, but if she knew of me she doesn’t remember. Claire Novak, Jody Mills — I tried to go to them, right after that, and they looked at me like I was a complete stranger, even though Claire —” Cas rubs a hand across his mouth, trying to pull himself together. “Dean, whatever you did, it was thorough. No one remembered me — no one who’s human, at least. You took any path I might have had out and blocked it. You left me to fend for myself as a near-human for a second time and never told me why. When Joshua restores your memories tomorrow, I don’t expect you to still care for me like you do now.”

Cas turns to Dean, and Dean sees the hurt and the judgment in his eyes. He wants to ask, _second time?_ But at this moment that seems like one of the least important parts of Cas’s speech.

“I think you’ll hate me again,” Cas finishes, matter-of-fact. “At least this time perhaps you’ll do me the courtesy of telling me _why_ , instead of pretending to care just before throwing me to the wolves.”

“Cas —” It’s hard to defend himself when he can’t remember what he did, when Cas sounds so sure of Dean’s hatred.

Then he thinks of that memory that surfaced when Cas was hurt, the one of them together in Dean’s bed. Dean saying, _“You’re safe now, Cas, I swear_. _I’m gonna take care of you.”_

“I told you I’d take care of you,” Dean says softly, and Cas’s eyes widen. “I told you you’d be safe.” They look at each other, not so far apart, and Cas looks like he did that night, wary and scared. And Dean _remembers_ , somehow, how that conversation ended. “I told you I loved you. I think that’s the first time I said it, that night. It was after Amara, when she ripped Lucifer out of you, when she and God left. We brought you home to the bunker, I remember, and you —” Dean closes his eyes, trying to catch the memory before it slips away from him. His head aches terribly, but he doesn’t care. “I brought you to my room because I wanted you to know that I was serious, that I wanted you there. But I had to say it, had to tell you because I didn’t before...” He opens his eyes to see Cas staring at him in shock. “Then I had to leave, but I don’t know why...”

“A case,” Cas says, in almost a whisper. “There was a case, and you didn’t think I was ready to go. When you came back, Sam told me to leave. You wouldn’t speak to me at all.”

“Cas.” Dean grabs his hands again, reckless. “Maybe we were cursed, maybe something happened —” Cas shakes his head, but Dean keeps pressing on. “I loved you, I _love_ you, I know that if I don’t know anything else, because I’ve felt it this whole fucking time —” Like a complete fucking sap he takes Cas’s hand and presses it over his heart. “I feel it.”

Cas takes his hand out from under Dean’s and stands up, crossing back over and around the bed, away from Dean, who doesn’t follow him. He just watches, waiting.

“Don’t say that,” Cas says finally, shakily. “You don’t remember, you weren’t there... Sam was —” He takes a shuddering breath. “Sam was almost crying. He said _you_ wanted me to leave, and he couldn’t make you change your mind so I had to go. Because I’m not _family._ ” Cas spits out that last word. “You wanted me gone, Dean. Maybe because I let Lucifer out, maybe because you were tired of me, I don’t know. But it was _your_ choice.”

Dean shakes his head, because even though Cas clearly believes that, he doesn’t. He can’t. He stands, too, but he doesn’t move around the bed, doesn’t approach Cas. Cas watches him warily.

“Cas, something happened on that case.” Dean’s pleading now, but that’s the only explanation that fits with how he feels and he needs Cas to believe him. He closes his eyes and puts his hand to his forehead. Dean reaches for the first time, trying to call a memory back to him rather than waiting on it to resurface on its own.

“Dean, don’t do that —”

Cas’s voice starts to fade as Dean concentrates harder, thinking back to the last thing he remembers, trying to force their broken history to emerge from his subconscious.

_He wakes up next to Cas, and for a moment, it’s heaven. How long has Dean wanted this? How long has he denied himself this, the chance to be this close to Cas, this vulnerable? Cas is still asleep, worn out and beat down from months of possession. Dean wants to reach out and smooth his hair back from his face, but he also doesn’t want to wake him. So he watches, watches for minutes that seem to stretch into hours and he never gets tired of it, and Cas wakes up and says, “Dean, I thought that was creepy?” And Dean is the happiest he’s been in years and so in love and…_


	23. Love

“Dean!” Someone taps his cheek. “Dean, hey! Focus on me!”

Groggily, Dean opens one eye to see Cas looking down at him. _Down?_ How did Cas get above him? Dean tries to sit up, but Cas pushes down on his shoulders and Dean falls back against the bed, blown over like a stalk of wheat bending in the face of a strong wind.

“You passed out,” Cas says, wiping at something under Dean’s nose. His hand comes back dripping with blood, and Dean has regained enough awareness to be embarrassed by that.

Dean closes his eyes and tries to push himself up again. This time it works, though Cas has to help him rest against the headboard. Dean feels like he’s re-experiencing the hangover from that time he snuck past border control into Tijuana when he was in his early twenties and hunting alone, when he got completely tequila-wasted and somehow lost his favorite fake I.D.

“Fuck,” he mutters, really registering for the first time that’s he on a bed, not the floor. Cas must have wrestled him up onto the mattress, and this is not how Dean wanted the first time Cas took him to bed to go. “For how long?”

“Ten minutes. I was about to go get Sam…” Cas presses his palm to Dean’s forehead as if checking his temperature. “Dean, you can’t do that. You can’t force it. Wait for Joshua to do it for you.”

Dean swallows. His throat is parched all of a sudden. Exactly like a fucking hangover. He tries to put his feet over the side of the bed so he can go get some water out of the bathroom, but Cas stops him with a hand to the chest.

“What do you need? Let me.” Dean starts to shake his head, but Cas insists, “Let me. You’ve taken care of me for the past week. I can take care of you for a little while.”

He doesn’t say it, but Dean hears the _before I die._

“Water,” he says, and his voice is scratchy. Cas nods, quickly walking to the bathroom. Dean listens to the tap turn on, the sound of Cas filling the plastic cup left by the sink. He rubs at his temples. When Cas comes back, he accepts the drink with a quiet, “Thank you.”

Cas sits next to him on the bed — watching, hovering. Dean crumples the plastic in his fist when he’s finished, throwing the cup across the room.

“I remembered waking up the next day. Next to you,” he says, not looking at Cas, his voice still a little hoarse. “And I was so fucking happy you were there.” He feels Cas shift on the bed next to him. “That’s all I got. A second of happiness, and now… Now we’re here.”

“You were happy, though?” Cas asks quietly, and Dean looks over at him. He always seems so sad, Cas, like he carries a permanent weight on his shoulders, one he won’t abandon, doesn’t even know how to. He was sad even in Dean’s memories.

“I love you,” Dean says simply, because he knows saying it once three years ago wasn’t enough to tide Cas over in all the time he had to spend alone since then. It hurt him more, actually, to hear it and lose it, and he needs to know it’s still true. “I loved you then. I love you now. I just _know_ it, I can’t fucking — I can’t explain. But I know.”

Cas stares down at his hands.

“Tomorrow, Dean, when I —”

“You’re not going alone,” Dean says, “and I’m not going to ask Joshua for the rest of memories.”

Cas looks back up sharply.

“Dean —”

“I don’t need them,” Dean says, forceful. “I already know the most important parts, and you can fill in the rest if you want. And if you’re right, if I did choose to forget you, if it wasn’t some curse, then that’s the worst fucking decision I’ve ever made. And I don’t want to remember it. I want to go with you to finish this fight we started a fucking decade ago because you’re not dying alone, Cas.”

Cas shakes his head, eyes watery.

“You can’t,” he says. “Sam —”

“Has Eileen. He doesn’t need me anymore.” Dean grins, but it doesn’t reach his eyes. “He hasn’t needed me, really, for a long time now. But you do need me, I think. And I need you.” He takes a deep breath. “And whatever happened to us, Cas, I know I didn’t hate you then. I know whatever I did, I must have done it for a reason. To protect you, maybe, I don’t... But I love you, and I’ll stop saying it if you want me to, but it’s true. I don’t know how to fix this, how to give you anything other than what I feel now — what I felt then, in the last second I can remember us being together. I want you to know that, to hold on to that tomorrow when we go out there. Because if this is another one of my last nights on Earth, I’m at least gonna tell you the fucking truth this time.”

Dean blinks, sort of startled at the surety with which he feels this is not the first time they’ve been in this position, him and Cas, waiting to die at the end of the world. Cas is looking at him just as stunned, but that’s probably because Dean keeps insisting he loves Cas, flying in the face of everything he’s believed for the past three years.

“You really mean that?” Cas says finally. “You loved me?”

“Yeah,” Dean says. “Fuck... Yeah, I did. I do.”

For several seconds they simply stare at each other. Who moves first is unclear, but in one second there’s a good foot of empty space between them and in the next they’re pressed against each other, arms winding around backs and mouth pressed against mouth.

Dean slips his tongue past Cas’s lips and Cas moans, reaching up with one hand to fist into Dean’s hair at the nape of his neck. His stubble burns where it rubs against Dean’s cheeks and his teeth keep clacking into Dean’s, but Dean doesn’t really give a damn. He doesn’t even take the time to think about how this is probably their first kiss, how maybe they should be taking this slow. He knows exactly where he wants to take them, and if this is the last night they have together, the one chance they have to be together, Dean’s not wasting any more time than necessary.

Throbbing headache forgotten, lost somewhere in the adrenaline and endorphins, Dean surges forward, locking his mouth on Cas’s and pushing him back onto the bed. Cas arches against him when Dean settles his weight fully across his body, claiming his mouth again with a possessive kiss, loving when Cas spreads his legs wider to accommodate him.

They sloppily thrust against each other a few times while fully clothed, and Dean can clearly feel Cas’s erection through his sweatpants, which suddenly seem like a huge inconvenience. He sits back on his knees, ignoring Cas’s questioning “Dean?” in favor of looping his fingers under the waistband and tugging slightly, stopping before he gets into dangerous territory.

Dean looks up at Cas and raises his eyebrows.

“Are we... Are we doing this?” he asks, heart pounding and anxiety spiking at the idea that Cas might say no, that this night might end with a few minutes of intense making-out and sleeping in separate beds.

But then Cas nods, says, “Yes, _please_ ,” and Dean shifts back enough to pull his sweatpants off entirely.

Cas apparently likes to go commando because there’s nothing under there, just bare skin, free of the marks Lucifer inflicted thanks to Joshua’s healing. Dean licks his lips, eyes drifting over every part of Cas — curled toes, feet, long legs, thick cock, heaving chest, wide eyes. He wants to grab that cock, to pull at it, to feel the weight of it in his hands, to take it into his mouth — but more than that Dean wants to make sure this is an even playing field, to make Cas look less nervous.

So Dean shuffles back off the bed and hurriedly removes his own clothes — shirt, pants, boxers all flung off to some unknown location. He stands at the foot of the bed watching Cas’s eyes narrow as they trace his naked body, sees the lust win out over any fear. Cas swallows, says, “Get back here,” and Dean does.

They crash into each other again, Cas sitting up as Dean settles down on his lap, grinding his ass against Cas’s cock, thrilling as Cas groans against his mouth. They move like that for a while, Dean on his knees, rocking back just enough to catch Cas’s erection along the cleft of his ass, Cas gasping and kissing Dean sloppily on his mouth, his eyelids, his cheeks.

Dean thinks he maybe has lube and a condom somewhere in his duffle, wants to take this a step further, so he leans back, smiling when Cas tries to chase his mouth.

“Hey.” He puts both hands on either side of Cas’s face, holding it gently in place. “Hey, we can keep doing this...” Dean suggestively thrusts his ass back a little, smiling again when it rubs Cas’s cock and Cas’s eyes fall shut. “Or we can go further, if you want.”

Cas opens his eyes. He already looks well-fucked, slightly bleary-eyed and ruffled, and _damn_ , Dean really needs someone to pay attention to his dick now, so he reaches down to stroke it while Cas thinks. That only serves to distract Cas, who watches the head slide in and out of Dean’s fist, nearly drooling.

“I want,” Cas says, then pauses. “I want you in me.”

Dean immediately stops stroking, tightening his hand around the bottom of his cock because _fuck_ , Cas has a great voice and he cannot handle it saying those words without desperately needing to come.

“We can do that,” Dean says, strangled. “We can definitely do that.”

He scrambles back off the bed, nearly tripping in his haste to reach his bag. Cas laughs at him, but Dean doesn’t feel any real embarrassment despite the blush on his cheeks and his good-natured, “Shut up!” It’s nice, for this not to feel so desperate and serious for a second, to pretend that they’re some normal couple about to have sex for the first time. To pretend like this isn’t a one-last-fuck-before-we-die type of thing.

 _Which_ , Dean stops to think as his hand finally finds the lube, already holding onto his packet of condoms, _it’s not. It’s not fuck then die._ He loves Cas, Cas clearly has feelings for him, and this doesn’t need to be rushed, even if at the beginning getting Cas naked and writhing immediately felt like life or death. Dean walks back over to the bed, slower this time, smiling when he sees Cas grinning at him, looking lighter than he has any time Dean can remember.

Dean crawls back on top of him, setting the condoms to the side and easing Cas’s legs further apart. Cas’s smile is gone, but he’s watching Dean carefully and Dean’s gonna take this slow now.

So he does. He’s careful opening Cas up, listening to the sounds he makes, the little gasps and moans. He goes easy and gentle, only searching for Cas’s prostate when he’s sure Cas is ready for the extra sensation, grinning when he brushes it and Cas arches his back in surprise. Dean reaches one hand up and slowly, loosely strokes Cas’s cock while he thrusts his fingers in and out of Cas’s body with increasing speed, and finally Cas says, “I think I’m ready,” and Dean’s so ready, too.

He doesn’t take his time rolling on the condom because that’s second nature by now, but Dean does pause before entering Cas to kiss him deeply, pouring all his love into it. Cas kisses back like he’s starved for it, and Dean doesn’t press in until Cas pulls away and says, “Dean, _today please_.”

And it feels like home, sliding into Cas, as cheesy as that is and as much as Dean would hate to say it out loud. Cas is tight around his dick and moaning in his ear, and every time Dean rocks in and out of him he makes these beautiful huffing noises, soft and awed.

Dean keeps the pace slow and steady, covering Cas’s neck and cheeks and forehead with kisses, dipping down to kiss his mouth every time Cas angles his head for it. They’re both breathing heavily, not saying anything, but it strikes Dean that with other partners he never really gets this close, preferring to fuck at a certain distance, not share every breath.

“I love you,” he says again, pouring the words straight past Cas’s parted lips because Cas didn’t tell him not to say it anymore, and it’s true. “I love you.”

He keeps saying it, a mantra of sorts, a promise that whatever happened before won’t happen again because here and now, Dean’s sure of one thing — it’s Cas he’s been missing, Cas he won’t let go again.

Dean barely has to get a hand on him and Cas is coming, gasping for air, eyes scrunched closed, nails digging into Dean’s back. Dean follows him after a few more thrusts, leaning his forehead against Cas’s and panting heavily as they both come down from the high.

When Dean opens his eyes, Cas’s are right there, blue and serene as he says, “I love you, Dean.”

 

 


	24. Face Off

Cas is gone when Dean wakes up.

It probably shouldn’t be a surprise. Dean’s sex life, after all, consists almost entirely of one night stands, and if he’s not gone in the morning the other person should be. And Cas — Cas fought against their obvious connection for so long, only to give in when he thought he was going to die. So Dean shouldn’t expect to wake up next to him.

But he did. And that sinking feeling in his chest when he looks around and sees Cas took his bag and his clothes and his shoes is matched only by the twist in his gut when Dean realizes what this means. The fear solidifies when he sees that the vial of grace is missing from the nightstand.

The bastard decided to face Lucifer alone.

 ///

Sam wakes to Dean pounding on their door. Years of ingrained habit cause him to jump up without thinking, grabbing the gun next to the bed, prepared to rush out and help his brother.

Sam’s jostling wakes Eileen, who signs a sleepy _“What is it?”_ while Sam scrambles for the door and opens it to a frantic, flustered Dean. Dean pushes his way into the room, and Eileen says, “Oh. Where’s Cas?” And Dean turns to Sam and Sam knows what happened just by the look on his brother’s face.

“Shit,” he breathes. They didn’t talk about it last night, but he knows there was a silent agreement amongst all of them that they weren’t going to let Cas face Lucifer alone. Even if the thought of going up against the archangel again makes Sam want to throw up and run away, he and Dean have let Cas down enough. This was supposed to be something they tried to do together.

“He just fucking...” Dean paces along the foot of the bed, then stops and yells, “Joshua!”

Sam is surprised to almost immediately hear the beating of wings and to feel the soft gust of wind that blows through the room. Joshua stands by the door, head cocked a little to one side as he appraises Dean. It must be an angel thing.

“Cas,” Dean grits out. “Where did you take Cas?”

“To face Lucifer,” Joshua replies, calm and collected. “Per our agreement.”

“To face his death,” Dean snaps back. “Take me to him, right fucking now.”

Joshua looks at Dean sadly, then glances over at Sam and Eileen.

“Castiel wished for me to tell you all thank you,” he says. “He appreciates the kindness you have shown him when he was injured, but he wanted to complete this task on his own.” Joshua moves forward to place a hand on Dean’s shoulder, and Sam watches as his brother’s body stiffens under the contact. “He also told me to tell you, Dean, that he meant what he said last night.”

Joshua moves his hand from Dean’s shoulder, bringing up two fingers to place on Dean’s forehead. He closes his eyes, but Dean keeps his open, staring at the angel, face full of anger and hurt. Joshua drops his hand, opening his eyes again and looking down at it, confused.

“Well,” he says, “I suppose that explains the thoroughness.”

“What the fuck are you talking about,” Sam and Dean say, almost at the same time.

Joshua walks over to Sam, ignoring Eileen’s protest of “Don’t!” and touching a finger to his forehead. Sam braces for some unknown hit, but nothing happens.

“Lucifer,” Joshua says, moving back away. “He’s the one who blocked your memories, and he’s likely the only one who would be able to restore them. I am sorry.”

Sam opens his mouth to argue, wants to say, “You’re sorry for this and not for letting Cas go off to die?” but any words are drowned out by a sudden flash of lightning right outside the room, followed by a roar that Sam’s heard before, like a chorus of demons chanting in time.

There’s only one place that sound belongs — the Cage.

Then everything goes black.

 ///

  _They’re driving in the rain, in the worst storm Sam has ever seen. It emerged from nowhere and nothing, and now Sam’s beginning to think Dean’s right. This is no demon._

_He and Dean, fighting against the wind to reach the location of the last body, finding a young man standing there. His eyes glow red and he says “Sam” in a way that feels like roaches crawling down his spine._

_Lucifer is weak still. He can’t control his powers; he can’t stop the storm raging around him as his grace tries to contain itself in his new vessel. But he can fly, and he takes them to the bunker._

_He wants the rest of Cas’s grace, anything he didn’t manage to hold on to when Amara ripped him from Cas’s body. He knows Cas will be there, that he followed them home.  
_

_Sam watches the archangel slam Dean against a wall when he can’t find what he’s looking for, watches Dean choke as an invisible hand tightens around his throat. Sam begs, “Please, stop!” knowing full well that won’t work on the devil._

_Sam hears the front door open, and he knows it’s Cas, back from a supply run and_ human _, breakable_. _He doesn’t like the look in Lucifer’s eyes, like he’s just found a new toy._

_“Tell him to leave,” Lucifer says. “Tell him Dean says he has to go, that Dean doesn’t want him here anymore.” Dean’s choking, hands grasping at his neck, still shaking his head and his eyes scream “NO” but Sam can only think, “Dean will die, Dean will die.” And Lucifer says, “Hurry if you want your brother to live.”_

_Sam’s never seen Cas’s face like that, like he’s been kicked in the gut. “I want to talk to Dean,” he says, and he’s crying, and now Sam’s crying, too, but Dean will die unless they play along with this game. So Sam says, “You have to go_ now _.”_

_Sam thought they would find Cas, that he and Dean would go after him as soon as he could draw up a sigil and banish Lucifer. But he thought wrong. Lucifer was waiting on it, has a hand around Sam’s throat before he can finish cutting his palm, slams him to the ground._

_“I’ll need all of you later,” he says, mouth inches from Sam’s face. Sam strains to get away from him, but he can’t move, can barely breathe. “But I’m going to enjoy watching the pain while it lasts. Sleep tight, Sammy.”_

_Sam and Dean wake up at the same time. “We fell asleep researching?” Sam asks, rubbing his head. God, it hurts. “Like fucking nerds,” Dean grumbles. “Hey, where’d you put the aspirin? I feel like someone’s scraped out my brain and run it through a blender.”_

_Dean walks toward the kitchen, stopping at the bookshelf. He eyes a few books scattered on the ground. “What happened here?” he asks, and Sam shrugs. Dean bends down to pick one up and suddenly he’s doubled over on himself, letting out a sharp gasp of pain. “Dean!” Sam moves toward him, and Dean says, “What have we done?” in a strangled voice. But then he looks back up at Sam and his eyes are clear, and he says, “I’m gonna get that aspirin now” like nothing’s wrong._

_What have we done?_

 ///

 Sam and Dean wake up at the same time in a field, only this time they remember everything.

Dean jolts up with a gasp, head and heart pounding, and when he spots Sam and Eileen next to him, alive and stunned as well, his next thought is _Cas, where’s Cas? I have to tell him what happened, I have to tell him..._

He doesn’t have to look far. Cas is shoved at him almost instantly, falling over on top of Dean, who barely manages to catch him before his head hits the ground. Dean reaches for his face as soon as he manages to get them both steady, cupping Cas’s jaw in his hands. Cas is bloodied and bruised again, and he shakes his head and whispers, “I tried to hold him off; I’m so sorry.”

Lucifer laughs. Dean knows it’s him before he even turns his head. He doesn’t want to look at him, but there’s not any choice. He moves his eyes slowly from Cas’s face to just over his shoulder. The archangel is wearing someone else now, a middle-aged man with a bad haircut, and he’s already burning through the body — welts across his face and hands, teeth rotting when he opens his mouth in a parody of a grin. Like how Seth looked toward the end, but accelerated. Lightning cracks far above them, and in it, Dean sees wings, wings that stretch so much further and wider than Cas’s ever did. As the light dies down Dean catches sight of a group of demons, all waiting placidly behind their master.

“Like it?” Lucifer gestures to his rotting vessel. “Took me several days to find a new one. That’s the problem with humans — shoddy construction. I kept burning through the others in seconds. Even poor Seth was really starting to fall apart there at the end. You know, I thought maybe I finally won the lotto with him — member of one of my secondary vessel lines and all that — but he just couldn’t hold all that new grace together.”

“You’re a cannibal,” Cas snarls, twisting around in Dean’s grip to face his brother.

Lucifer shrugs, and Dean can hear the bones in his shoulders cracking.

“And you’re a hypocrite. You think because you only stole the grace of one brother that makes you better than me?” Lucifer steps forward, and Dean sees he’s holding a familiar blade, one with a nick on the hilt. Cas’s. Lucifer must have stolen it from him when he was torturing Cas at The Bend. It has blood and grace shining on it, and Dean thinks, _Joshua._ “You did what you had to do to survive. I’m doing what I have to do to survive — hunting our siblings down, slaughtering them where they stand, and boosting my power with theirs in the process.”

He kneels down right in front of them, and Dean sees Eileen eyeing the blade like maybe she can reach out and take it, stab him with it. Dean shakes his head.

“But after all this time, after all the grace I’ve amassed, I still can’t quite get back into Heaven.” Lucifer reaches out with his blade and taps Cas’s cheek. Cas shies away, and Dean pulls him back toward his chest. “I think you three are the key to the puzzle. I must admit, I fucked myself over when I decided to play games with you rather than go straight for the throat immediately.”

He points the blade at Cas again. “You, you vanished, and for a long time I couldn’t find you, couldn’t find your grace that I lost when Amara threw me out. And these two —” He looks at Sam and Dean. “Well, I intended to restore their memories eventually, for maximum pain and pining and all that, but they were just too clueless to pass up fucking with.”

Lucifer smiles, and one rotted tooth falls to the ground. Dean flinches away. “All the times I called you for hunts, all the lore and advice you shared — it really helped me when I needed to locate hunters to have possessed, and it also helped me find my siblings and build up my arsenal. For that I thank you. And I thank you, Cas, for finally playing right into my hands and coming to me.”

Lucifer stands back up and rubs his hands together eagerly. Pieces of skin start to flake off where they’re touching, and the Winchesters and Cas curl back in disgust.

“So,” he says, “thanks to you and Dean I finally found the rest of your grace, Castiel. I mean, although I took pleasure in gathering up the little scraps that scattered to the wind, I always knew I was missing the biggest chunk. Admittedly, I should have figured this out years ago, but I just didn’t _get it_ then. Human affection, _ugh_.” He shudders, gagging. “But when I saw how he was still so attached to you, memories or no memories, it all finally made sense.” Lucifer gestures behind him, and another bolt of lightning illuminates the demons guarding a massive tree that Dean recognizes — they’re right behind the bunker. “The bulk of it did come home eventually, just not in the way I expected it to.”

Cas surges forward out of Dean’s arms like he’s going to be able to reach the grace tree first, but it only takes a sweep of Lucifer’s hand to send him falling back to the ground.

“I’ve been nice so far,” Lucifer says sternly, and Dean can now see his teeth where the skin around the vessel’s jaw has rotted through, “but that time is over. So here’s what’s going to happen — I’m going to take the rest of your grace, Castiel, and that last boost of soul-driven divinity will get me to Heaven.” He grins hideously at Cas’s confusion. “Oh, right — I forgot that you can’t see your own soul, weak as you are, baby brother. But it’s there, and it’s fused with this.”

He reaches out a hand and touches the tree, which starts to glow. Even though their circumstances are dire, Dean can’t help but stare in wonder as blue light overtakes the trunk, curling through the bark, twisting into the branches, illuminating the leaves. That’s _Cas_.

“And then I am, unfortunately, going to need a better vessel to retake Heaven and rebuild Earth in my own image. Which brings me to why you’re all here.” Lucifer looks at Dean, and the vessel’s dead eyes grow red. “I thought it might be fun to let you pick, Dean — so, do I take Castiel or Sam?”


	25. Grace

Lucifer’s vessel begins to crack, wrinkles turning into abscesses, leaking blood burning bright red — his grace.

“Dean,” he says again, and he snaps his fingers and lightning fills the sky. “Chop, chop. Cas or Sam, Sam or Cas?”

“You’re just going to kill us all anyway,” Sam snaps, but Dean can hear the tremor running underneath his bravado. “So why would any of us say yes to you?”

Lucifer shakes his head, tightening his grip on the tree trunk. Red mixes with blue and Cas twitches next to Dean, clearly wanting to call the rest of his grace to him but unable to say anything at all.

“Yes, Sam,” Lucifer says, sickly sweet, “I will kill you all, all but one. And that one will be with me for all eternity.” Then he turns to Dean. “Chose, and I’ll make the other one’s death quick. Oh, and word of caution to the lucky winner — the longer you take to say _yes_ , the more of this world I destroy before I go back home.”

Another burst of lightning illuminates the sky, and Dean digs his fingers into the ground, feeling the cool dirt beneath his knuckles. He looks at Sam, who’s holding Eileen and shaking his head; then he looks at Cas, whose lips are pressed into a thin line, accepting of his fate. He knows them both better than anyone else, knows if he doesn’t say something soon, find some way out of this, both of these idiots will volunteer to be an eternal angel condom and he’ll be the last man standing in the midst of a pile of bodies before his own hits the floor.

And the world will burn anyway.

“If I say yes,” Sam says, voice ringing with clarity he surely doesn’t feel, “you know I’ll just beat you again.”

The tree trunk starts to crack as Lucifer squeezes it, grace beginning to seep out, running like sap to the ground where it pools together — pulsing, waiting. Dean hears Eileen whisper, “Sam,” frantic and strangled. Cas stares at the grace, surely about to do something stupid enough to match Sam.

“Sammy,” Lucifer says, “I’ve learned my lesson with you. With _both_ of you.” He looks pointedly at Cas. “There won’t be anything left of you by the time I’m through.”

Then he turns back to Dean.

“So, who’s it gonna be?” Lucifer asks, then he snaps his fingers and everything else disappears.

///

Dean’s in the dark.

He whirls around to scan his surroundings, but there’s nothing else here with him, wherever _here_ might be — no demons, no grace tree, no Sam, no Eileen. No Cas. Just an empty, black room of indeterminate size.

“What the hell?” he asks the darkness surrounding him.

“No, no,” says a voice that sounds familiar, yet completely wrong. “Not hell. Try a secondary plane that only an archangel could access.”

Dean turns around, and this time Lucifer is behind him. He knows it’s Lucifer because Sam would never wear that predatory smile while looking at him, but it still feels like a knife to the gut to see the devil in his brother’s body.

“Sam,” Dean croaks, and Lucifer laughs with his brother’s vocal cords, making Sam’s chuckle come out distorted and harsh and completely wrong.

“No,” he says, shaking his head, “not yet, anyway. He didn’t say yes, Dean. I’m only showing you this version so you can see all of your options laid out before you.”

Lucifer snaps his fingers again and Dean winces, a knee-jerk reaction. Sam is still standing there, and this time it is _Sam_ , but not a Sam Dean recognizes. He’s shaking and pale, burns covering most of his body, chains hooked into his skin, eyes wide with terror. Dean closes his eyes against the sight of his little brother in Hell, gagging on the bile that tries to force its way up his throat.

“Dean,” the vision of Sam chokes out. “Dean!”

Dean stubbornly keeps his eyes closed. “It’s not real, it’s not real, it’s not real,” he whispers into the palm of his hand, mouth sour and eyes aching. “It’s not real.”

“It was.” That’s Lucifer again, and Dean refuses to look at him. “He was with me for so long he couldn’t remember your name to scream by the end, Dean. So that’s Option A — I take Sam and make him think he’s in Hell with me.”

Another sharp _snap_.

“Dean.” _Cas_ , Cas sounding completely wrecked, and Dean can’t help but open his eyes again. Cas is lying in a hospital bed, the only other thing inside this strange in-between space, curled in on himself and talking into a phone. “I know you don’t want to talk to me, but —” He cuts off with a sort of strangled sound that he buries into the sheets before speaking again, and Dean can’t take his eyes off him. “I, uh — I’m in trouble.” Cas takes another shaky breath. “There was, uh, this demon and I got hurt… Dean I don’t know what to do. They’re asking me for insurance and medical history and —” Cas tilts his face up, and Dean can finally see him clearly. His cheeks are streaked with tears. “Sam said you didn’t want to talk to me, but I have no one else. I need — please, just tell what to do and I won’t call again. I just need help. I need you.”

_Snap._

Lucifer stands where the bed was, wearing a worn down Cas like an ill-fitting suit. Dean can still see Cas in the wrinkled old trenchcoat, in the bruises under his eyelids, the weary tilt of his mouth. But then Lucifer smiles and any resemblance to Cas drops like a discarded coat.

“I liked that one in particular,” Lucifer says. “Intercepting it was the most fun I’d had in months. Of course, showing up to the hospital to find him already gone was a bit of a let down, but then I also had this one to listen to.”

He holds up a cellphone, and another message plays.

“Dean.” Cas again, but steadier, angrier. “I — I left you a message a few days ago. I’d like to ask you not to listen to it, if you haven’t already.” There’s a long silence. “Not that you’ll listen to me, or care about what I want, or about me…” Cas sniffs over the voicemail, and it echoes loudly through the plane, accusatory. “You — You _abandoned_ me. Again. You told me that you’d take care of me, that you _loved_ me, and — Was that some kind of punishment? To let me feel wanted before you… Forget it.” His voice is so cold, and Dean thinks of Cas screaming “Don’t touch me!” after Andrew died. This is the anger he lived with for three years. This is the pain Cas wanted to escape from, that Dean didn’t save him from. “I won’t bother you again.”

Lucifer looks at Dean, and Dean stares back, shaken.

“Option B,” he says, “I make dear Castiel relive that moment again and again — make him relive all his worst moments, the ones involving you, the ones involving the angels, the times he was tortured, the times he was lost and forgotten — until he wants to die. But I’ll never let him.”

Lucifer stalks forward, and Dean has no time to get out of the way, nowhere to go. The archangel's fist, in the shape of Cas's familiar, steady hand, curls around Dean's throat. He lifts Dean off the floor and Dean chokes as he tries to get his breath back, fighting uselessly against the hand at his throat. Lucifer tightens his grip, and Dean sees nothing of Cas in the blue eyes glaring at him.

"You took everything from me," Lucifer says with a snarl, and Dean tries to place his toes on the floor but he's being held up too high. "The three of you took my purpose, my battle, my redemption, my kingdom. And I will take everything from you."

Then he holds up his other hand and snaps his fingers one last time.

///

They’re back in the field, and Dean knows that Cas and Sam and Eileen are watching them like no time has passed.

Lucifer stares pointedly at Dean.

“So,” he says again. “Who’s it gonna be?” And there was clearly never a choice that Dean could accept, so Dean snarls, “Neither” without thinking.

Cas and Sam both say, “Dean!” but he’s not listening to them. He blatantly looks over the corpse Lucifer is wearing, the bones showing through the broken skin, starting to char at the edges, the charcoaled organs dropping out through the holes in the flesh. “I’m not choosing, and you can’t keep it together long enough to wait.”

The head of the vessel tilts, and all the bones in the neck crack, starting to chip and crumble into dust.

“There is a third choice,” Lucifer said, “though I prefer it the least.”

He holds a skeletal hand out, and Cas’s grace, mixed with his own, starts to swirl around, rising toward him. Cas watches it, jaw clenched, muttering something in Enochian that Dean can’t understand and Lucifer doesn’t seem to notice. Now that the vessel is disintegrating in front of them the storm is picking up, wind howling over the plains, rain pouring down in sheets. In the lightning Dean swears he sees a face — massive, leering, inhuman. He looks back at the mangled man in front of them. If they don’t stop this, Lucifer’s true form will be loose and there will be nothing left of them — nothing left of anything.

“I can take you,” Lucifer says, and he twists his hand up. Simultaneously, the grace surges up toward him, surrounding the burning head of his vessel, and Sam, Cas, and Eileen fall back on the ground, screaming in pain. “Say _yes_ , Dean,” and Dean can hear the layered roar over his human voice now, a rising chorus of terror, “and they die quickly.”

Dean sees Sam reach out for Eileen, grasping her hand and screaming, “Take me!” at the same time Cas’s desperate Enochian reaches a fever pitch over the wail of the storm. Dean opens his mouth to say “Yes,” but he’s never been good at giving in under insurmountable odds so what comes out is, “Just try getting into Heaven without one of us.”

And suddenly the wind and the rain stop, the lightning fades in the sky. And the horror show that is Lucifer’s disintegrating vessel looks at the charred bones of its hands, now pulsing a mixture of bright white and blue, and says, shocked, “What?”

Cas yells, “Put your heads down!” and the world around them explodes.

 ///

Dean’s really fucking tired of waking up completely disoriented. He blinks, trying to force his eyes to adjust, but everything remains a blur.

He closes his eyes again, focuses on what he can remember — Lucifer took them from their motel room, he tried to get one of them to be his vessel, something exploded and Cas...

Dean opens his eyes again. He remembers everything about Cas, from the barn to that last day in the bunker with Seth’s — no,  _Lucifer’s —_  hands around his throat as Sam told Cas he had to leave.

“Cas,” he says, because his eyes are finally starting to focus and it actually looks like he’s back in the bunker now. “Cas! Sammy!” He twists in place, briefly registering memory foam at his back, then falls out of bed.

“Fuck,” Dean says to the hard floor, which at least he can see clearly now. Then he hears a voice say, “Dean, are you alright?”

It’s Cas. He’s kneeling next to Dean on the floor, wearing a concerned expression and — the trench coat?

“Hey,” Dean says, absently reaching out to tug at a button. “You still have this.”

Cas’s eyes nearly cross as he looks down at Dean’s hand on the coat, and Dean would laugh if his head didn’t hurt so badly.

“Yes, well,” Cas says. “I found it in the room that used to be mine.” And he smiles fondly, first down at the coat, then at Dean. “Here.” He sticks his hands under Dean’s armpits and bodily lifts him up. “You should be in bed still.”

Dean lets Cas push him down onto the bed, because now that he’s thinking about it, he is sort of sore all over — and not in the fun way.

“Sam? Eileen?” he manages to ask, noting with a small smile that Cas is now actually tucking him in, pulling the blankets back up and around him.

“They’re fine,” Cas says. “They’ve both been awake for a while.” He pauses with his hands at Dean’s shoulders, looking down at the blanket. “I know what happened, at the end, after Amara and Chuck... Sam told me. And it wasn’t your fault, nor his.”

Dean wiggles one arm free to place a hand over Cas’s, squeezing lightly.

“What happened in the field, Cas?” he asks, trying to get Cas’s mind off the years he spent angry with the Winchesters, believing he’d been abandoned.

Cas looks at Dean, a grin slowly spreading across his face. He looks... _smug?_

“I blew up Lucifer,” he says, and Dean gapes at him.

“I thought... You said that you —”

“Yes, I thought I had to be the bomb, too. But the grace I had, the grace he left behind to taunt me with — it wouldn’t have been enough.” He shrugs. “But the rest of it was. As he was taking my grace in, he was so preoccupied with you he didn’t notice me calling out to it, telling it to fight back, to… To protect you.” Cas is blushing now, like admitting that he asked his grace to protect Dean specifically is so embarrassing. “It’s been here watching over you this whole time, trying to reach out to you subconsciously, so it only makes sense it would give its all to save you from saying yes to him.”

“Holy shit,” Dean murmurs. “You grace self-destructed _inside_ Lucifer? For _me_?”

Cas nods.

“It worked much better than I hoped. As it turns out, the grace of the other angels he’d imbibed didn’t take to him so well. It must have emerged to fight against him, because that explosion was caused by far more than the power of one seraph.” He pauses. “In the end his greed is what really killed him.”

Cas looks almost haunted for a moment, and Dean wonders if it hurts him to lose his brother, no matter how insane. Or maybe he’s sad about all the grace, his own included, that was destroyed to kill Lucifer. In a way, Cas lost more than one sibling today, all in the name of protecting Dean — again. And Dean’s uncomfortable with that thought, so he tries to shake it off.

“Wait,” he says, “if an archangel exploded right in front of us, how are we still alive? I mean, we’re talking _Ark of the Covenant_ levels of destruction here. We should all be puddles of goo by now.”

Cas smiles again and holds up the hand Dean isn’t holding. In the center of his palm a blue light starts to rise.

“Some of it came back to me,” he says, “and it protected us all. When I woke up, I had enough strength to heal most of your injuries and to bring you all back here.”

Dean breathes out, feeling both excitement for Cas and a vague sense of dread. This is what Cas wanted — to get his grace back, to feel like he had a purpose.

“So... you’re an angel again?” Dean asks slowly.

“Yes,” Cas says, and the light fades from his palm. “Still not as powerful as I used to be, but it will do.”

“So,” Dean says again, and he has to clear his throat against the lump settling there. “Are you, uh, gonna go back to Heaven then? You’re probably their hero now, killing Lucifer and all. Or you said you wanted to go heal people?”

Cas’s brow furrows.

“I wasn’t planning on going back to Heaven, no,” he says, sounding confused, “and I do want to heal others, but you’re my first priority. Unless...” Cas’s face falls, and he seems unsure. “Unless you’ve changed your mind. I do understand that the last time you offered me a home here was several years —”

Cas is cut off with a surprised _umph_ when Dean sits up and throws his arms around him, burying his face in Cas’s neck.

“You’re not going anywhere,” Dean says into the soft skin there, and Cas lets out a long breath, relieved. “I meant what I said last night.”

Cas’s arms come around Dean’s back, and he squeezes back uncertainly. It kind of hurts — Dean did just survive an exploding archangel — but Dean holds him back just as tight.

“I’m gonna take care of you,” Dean vows, and Cas huffs a laugh into Dean’s hair.

“First,” he says, and Dean hears the smile in his voice, “I’m going to take care of you.”


	26. Epilogue

“Dean, stop. It’s stuck. This isn’t working.”

Dean lets out a long sigh and grits his teeth.

“It’s gonna work, Cas,” he says, panting and a little out of breath. “I just have to push harder...”

“Push harder? Wh— Dean, no.”

Cas leans his head out of the driver’s side window. “This car weighs approximately 6,000 pounds. We may need to call a tow truck.”

Dean presses his forehead against the trunk of the Continental, his feet sinking further into the mud. His jeans are going to be ruined after this.

“Sure, Cas, let’s call a tow truck out here. Then we can explain why there’s a massive pile of human ashes in the front yard of a home where an assault was recently reported.”

There’s a long pause from the front of the car as Cas considers this.

“Fine,” he relents, though he makes sure to sound as pissy as possible. “We’ll do this your way.” Dean hears the engine rev up as Cas steps on the gas again, and he’s immediately sprayed with a thick layer of mud as the Continental’s tires churn uselessly.

“Cas!” Dean yelps as dirt coats his legs and lower abdomen. “Some warning would have been nice!”

Cas doesn’t respond, but Dean knows he’s rolling his eyes. Since Lucifer’s death and the restoration of Dean’s memories a week prior, they’ve fallen back into their old habits — stupid arguments, intense eye contact, quietly sincere compliments. The plus side is that now they’re actually having sex, too. Sometimes they even talk about their feelings, which Dean supposes makes this an officially adult relationship — the first he’s had in a very long time. Definitely the last he’ll have, too, because he intends to make sure this one sticks.

Dean grits his teeth and leans harder into the Continental, putting all of his weight into it. He promised Cas they’d get his car back from The Bend, but he had no idea it would be this much work. His feet slip through the mud in an attempt to gain any sort of traction, and in the driver’s seat Cas continues to press down on the gas pedal.

“Give it a little more!” Dean yells over the sound of the engine once he’s found a good foothold, and Cas obliges. The effect is instantaneous — the tires finally get traction, the Continental actually starts rolling, and Dean falls face first into the mud.

He’s spitting a clump of dirt and grass out of his mouth when he hears Cas say, “Oh, Dean,” in the most exasperated voice, and Dean should be angry but he starts laughing instead. He rolls over onto his back because he might as well get totally filthy at this point, and says, “Oh, Dean,” in an exaggerated imitation of Cas's rough voice. Cas comes into view, towering over Dean with his eyebrows raised.

“Well,” Dean says, and he grins up at Cas, “I told you it would work. Now, you gonna help me get cleaned up or what?”

Cas rolls his eyes but holds out a hand to pull Dean to his feet.

“You’re not getting in my car like that,” he says, but there’s a smile playing at the edges of his mouth that Dean can’t help but return. “We passed a motel —”

“Yeah, by Maywood.” Dean’s smile is more of a smirk now. “I saw it. But, uh, you know... It would be kind of a shame not to christen Goldie here in the right way.” He taps the Continental’s side.

Cas raises his eyebrows again. “Goldie?”

“Yeah, man, you gotta give her a nickname. That’s just, the basics of car ownership.” Dean leans against the Continental in a way that’s supposed to be seductive, but the effect is ruined by all the mud.

Nonetheless, Cas looks around as if to make sure no one is watching before he says, “We’re not having sex here, Dean.”

“No, of course not,” Dean hurries to say. “I meant like we pull over in a field somewhere, do it Kansas style...”

Cas tilts his head, confused.

“We’re in Nebraska.”

Dean sighs, put-upon and long-suffering, but he’s still so fucking happy because that response is _Cas_ to the core.

“Dude, just... go with me on this.”

Cas steps forward into Dean's personal space, and now would be the time where anyone else would make some kind of innuendo, but that’s not really how Cas rolls. Instead he says, completely earnest, “I always do,” and Dean’s heart thuds in his chest and he leans down to touch his forehead to Cas’s.

“Fuck,” he says, and he’s not sure he means to be this honest but he can’t help himself. “I’m really fucking glad to have you back, Cas.”

Cas runs a hand up Dean’s arm, pausing at his shoulder.

“Glad to be back,” he says, and his eyes are warm. “Now let’s go home.”

“Yeah.” Dean's throat is a little tight. “I mean, field sex first, but then — Yeah. We can go home.”

**Author's Note:**

> So if you've reached the end, let me just say — I love you. 
> 
> No, seriously, this fic barely came into existence (I started writing it toward the end of season 11 and abandoned it for a while, if you couldn't tell by the timeline), and if you took the time to read it, you are my favorite person. Please consider leaving kudos and/or comments.
> 
> I'd also like to thank Heike again for her amazing art, and a special thanks to B for reading this even though she's seen approximately four (4) episodes of Supernatural. And then of course there would be no DCBB without the mods, so many thanks to them as well.
> 
> You can find me [here](https://ellis-park.tumblr.com/) on Tumblr should you ever wish to mutually flail about Dean, Cas or Dean & Cas. I don't bite.


End file.
